


I Could Be Your Welcome

by flashindie



Series: The Center and Circumference [1]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-06-25 05:02:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 50,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19738846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashindie/pseuds/flashindie
Summary: “Okay, well, I was talking to Rio while we were - - in a meeting,” oh god, that’s - - Beth flushes at Ruby’s knowing look, can feel the bubble of babble in her throat cresting, but powers through it. “And I told him Dean and I were selling the house, and I asked him for, you know, like, a little extra money or a raise or something to help me out with finding somewhere.”“A raise on your fifty percent?” Ruby asks, and Beth nods vehemently, returning Ruby’sare you out of your mind?look with her ownwho’s side are you on?look before powering through.“Anyway, he said no, and then we were at a – another meeting a couple of days ago, and he proposed that we - -“ she fumbles for the words in her head. “Consolidate our assets. In our partnership.”- -Canon divergence from 2.11. Beth and Rio move in together. They make it work.





	1. Chapter 1

“Did you ever play dream house?” 

At his look, the answer is a resounding _no_ , but Beth powers through anyway, curling herself a little closer to him, her fingers ghosting lightly over his bare chest. He hums a little beneath her, content for the moment, and maybe she has to bite back the smile when she finds that spot on his side that makes him twitch (she’d leave it alone if he’d just admit he was ticklish there).

“Ruby and me still play it. God, isn’t that sad? You’re supposed to _have_ the dream house at our age, not still be fantasising about it. That’s the game by the way, building your dream house like - - big kitchen, big yard, swimming pool with like, a little cave you can swim into that’s secretly a spa.” 

He snorts at that, his own hand coming up to massage the back of her neck, making her squirm against him. He always finds the knots too quickly, and he’s not shy about trying to work them out. She’s pretty sure he does it here, in the afterglow, in her bed, for that exact reason too – to get her wriggling and breathless against his side all over again. He’s doing a pretty good job of it too when he finally speaks.

“Ain’t this your dream house?” 

Beth sighs, fixing her gaze out the French doors towards her backyard. She can see the kid’s treehouse from here, even in the dark smudge of night – the long purple slide almost glowing with the reflection of the patio lights. She can’t say she’ll miss sweeping the leaves out of it in the fall, or plucking splinters from little hands, but she’ll miss the way Danny giggles from the window playing _Dinosaur Train_ , Jane roaring as she tries to climb up the inside of the slide. 

“Parts of it were, I guess, but it was a compromise. Everything with Dean was a compromise. God, everything with this new place will be too.” 

The thought sits bitterly in her gut, and Rio’s fingers glide up to the base of her skull, dipping into the pressure point there so tenderly that she groans. She rocks her face into his chest to give him better access, and she can feel it – the way his other hand grips her shoulder, pulling her just slightly over so her bare breast presses into his chest too, and she’d roll her eyes (he might pretend he doesn’t – but he really does have a one-track mind – or, at least, he does with _her_ ) if all of this didn’t feel so good. 

“You gotta learn to relax, mami.” 

“Easy for you to say,” she bites, pushing off his chest a little to look up at him, the half-light from outside sharpening his features, making long shadows of his eyelashes. “If this sale goes through, I’ve got to find somewhere that’ll take me and four kids. My credit is still shot, so I’m not going to qualify for a mortgage which means buying something is off the table. Do you know what renting’s like?”

“Do you?” he counters easily, forehead furrowing in faux seriousness, and she scowls, getting annoyed enough that she tries to roll over and away from him, only to have him grab her and use her backwards momentum to swing her towards him and pull her better over him – until she’s draped sideways across him like a doll. He gives her ass a lazy (but still _hard_ ) slap, making her yelp which only makes him – entirely predictably – _laugh_. 

She scrambles up onto all fours, clambering off him and then the bed, wishing Rio couldn’t see her post-sex jelly-legged stumble as she finds her nearest robe and wraps it around herself. 

“You’re an asshole, you know that?” 

He nods easily in agreement, waiting until the exact moment that she’s finished tying up the sash on her robe to sit up and slide to the edge of the bed, reach over to her and undo it again. She glowers at him, but she feels it’s probably dulled by the fact that she lets him do it.

Huffing out an irritated breath, Beth’s gaze drifts across her bedroom as Rio slides her robe back off her, leaving it to pool at her feet. She may not have always loved the house, but this bedroom had been the most she’d had for so long – a space that was truly hers, even if the things in it hadn’t always felt like it. 

Now, Rio’s hands are warm at her waist, his fingers calloused as they clutch gently at her soft skin, pulling her to stand naked between his legs. Leaning forwards, he presses his lips to her belly before lifting his head enough to mouth at her breast. She can’t help the way her eyelids flutter shut at his touch, can’t keep her own hands from holding the back of his head, her nails raking through his closely cut hair, can’t stop herself from hissing when his teeth graze her nipple in reply. 

“I’m serious,” she tells him, tugging his head back from her chest. “I could be homeless.” 

He looks up at her, arching an eyebrow as he slides his hands down to her hips. 

“You anglin’ for a raise? Because it ain’t gonna happen. You already get fifty.” 

Beth pouts. 

“Yeah, but I split my fifty with Annie and Ruby.” 

If it’s possible, his eyebrow raises even higher. He opens his mouth a little, shaking his head from side to side, his gaze fixed on her. 

“And that’s my problem how?” 

Beth bites her lip, deliberately widens her eyes when she looks down at him and drags her hands from his skull to curl at the back of his neck. 

“We could split it evenly between the four of us. 25% each, instead of _one_ person getting 50 and the other three getting 16 and a half.” 

It’s enough to make him laugh, loud and fast, his hands tightening around her hips as he draws his brow in faux consideration. 

“Hmm, so we spread the work too? 25% each? Your sister gonna start handlin’ the books? Your friend gonna start smugglin’ drugs across the border between church on Sunday and dinner with her cop husband?” 

Beth should probably be more offended, but only really manages to roll her eyes. He acts like Ruby hasn’t smuggled drugs before, albeit not on her own like both Annie and Beth have now, but still. It counts. 

And god, hadn’t that taken a lot of convincing too? After Ruby and Annie had left the drugs in Canada, after he’d pulled her back in by way of posted body parts, Rio had insisted that Beth be both present and responsible for all the jobs he gave them. It was only after what felt like hundreds of successful runs that he’d let Annie do one on her own, and even then, the haul had been a small one – a favour for a manufacturer who’d had heat on him and needed to unload a stash quickly as opposed to genuine business. (When Beth had questioned his motivation for doing the favour, Rio had shrugged and said: “Ain’t ever a bad move in this business to be owed somethin’, darlin’.”)

“They’ve worked hard for you,” Beth says now, because they have, her fingers still stroking the back of his neck in that way she knows he likes, and Rio hums, looking at her like he’s trying to work something out, and finally just asks it: 

“You want this raise for them or yourself?” 

“Why do those things have to be exclusive?” 

He laughs at that, and Beth opens her mouth to continue, when Rio suddenly stands up, the movement so sudden she gasps in surprise, his body so close to hers that they’re chest-to-chest, and then he’s turning them, hooking his foot behind her ankle and tugging so she falls heavily back onto the bed. In an instant he’s on top of her, his hands wrapped around her wrists, jerking her arms up over her bed as he looms over her.

“My fifty is mine,” he tells her. “Non-negotiable. How you want to spend yours is your business, yeah? They’re on your pay roll, I get it, but they ain’t on mine. Not since they lost me half a million dollars of product in some nursin’ home trash can.” 

Beth frowns, bucking up underneath him, and Rio pushes her wrists together tight enough that he only needs one hand to hold them, freeing his other to ghost down her body, settling on her hip and holding her down into the mattress. 

“That was more than a year ago,” Beth tries, and Rio gives her a distinctly unimpressed look which only makes Beth’s frown deepen. She knows what he wants to hear too, knows there’s not a chance he’s going to let her go until she does, so she just sighs, says, “Fine, no raise,” and Rio smirks, pleased at her concession, leaning down to kiss her before letting her go, flopping down onto the mattress beside her. 

She didn’t really expect it, but still, it was worth a shot. She pouts a little to herself, bringing her arms back down to play with the sheets below her. Even the thought of this move has been enough to punctuate her with anxiety – she just doesn’t have enough clean finance to buy a house, and no collateral since Boland Motors was seized by the FBI. Beth, Ruby and Annie had managed to pay Rio back, half by washing the cash he gave them, and half after robbing a string of Instagram influencer make-up pop-ups in suburban shopping malls and selling the haul through a variety of backchannels Annie had dug up. 

It had been enough to smooth over both the debt and Rio’s hurt feelings, and he’d brought them back into his cash and drugs operation (without Boland Motors, he’d set up his own dealership like he’d threatened to all those months before, populating it with legitimate staff while running the cars in the back much like he had before), and Beth had convinced him to take her on as partner again by handling the books, giving him Boland Motors extensive, historic networks, and brokering a deal with one of the auto auction houses – effectively doubling the amount of cash they washed and the drugs they brought in. 

(And they’d fallen back into bed together at some point - or rather, onto the desk in the auto auction office and the backseat of his car - and hadn’t quite gotten out of it since. And god, it had been Annie who’d suggested talking to Rio about buying one of his places - “Can’t gangfriend cut you a deal? He owns property doesn’t he?” 

And sure, Beth had thought, but the idea of Rio as her landlord makes her basically want to fling herself into oncoming traffic.) 

Still. The money was _dirty_ , off the books, and she doesn’t really like her chances of buying a house big enough for herself and four children with a duffel bag full of cash. 

She sighs, rubbing slightly at her face, and she thinks Rio must be almost asleep when his voice sounds through the quiet. 

“Fireplace.”

Beth blinks, squinting over at him. 

“What?” 

He gives her a faux innocent look at that, eyebrows raised, eyes half-lidded already with sleep. 

“Ain’t we playin’ Dream House?” 

Beth grins in surprise, not quite able to help herself as she scoots up the bed to lay better beside him. Her head finds the pillow, and she leans down just enough to tug the sheets up over both of them. 

“Two car garage with a big, built-in laundry. A dishwasher,” she adds, a borderline obscene moan escaping her lips, and Rio snorts, shaking his head a little beside her. 

“Ain’t you full of surprises?” He asks, his voice weighed down with sarcasm, before taking a breath, adding, softly, “High ceilin’s, lots of natural light.” 

“And here I thought you’d want to maintain your dark and broody image with something like the Bat Cave,” she says, her laugh turning into a yelp when he pinches her side.

She rolls over, trapping his hand beneath her and curls back against his chest, her fingers drawing little circles into his abdomen and god, his body is hard beneath her. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to that – not with how broad and doughy Dean had always been. Rio’s wiry, but he’s all muscle really – tightly corded strength which he likes to often remind her about when he lifts her to get her against walls or tumbling back into bed. 

Her thighs clench a little at the thought, and Beth shakes her head, wrinkling her nose, pushing her thoughts back to the other type of fantasy. 

“A chicken coop out the back,” she says, her tone a little dreamy, and Rio makes a firm noise of disagreement.

“Chickens stink,” he says. “And they ain’t smart.” 

“But they’re so cute! Imagine a little coop out the back. The kids getting up early to feed them. Making omelettes for breakfast with fresh eggs.” 

Beth hums happily, and she really can picture it – will even dream it all night when Rio’s breathing steadies out beneath her and his hands find the back of her neck again, coaxing her gently to sleep.

*

She’s on a drop when she gets the call from Dean to tell her that the house has sold.

“We’ve still got the thirty-day window,” he tells her. “But they were happy with the inspection, you know? Said they loved the place. The family vibe and all.” 

“Right,” Beth says, her hand clenching white knuckled around the steering wheel. Dean’s been living in his grandfather’s old beach house a few hours out of Detroit in South Haven. His mother offering to sign it over to him so long as he promised to maintain it, and Dean had decided that he liked the area so much he might move there, use the money from the house sale to start a car and boat rental place for vacationers. Beth had been happy for him, truly, even if she couldn’t quite contain the bitterness at Dean’s ability to always land on his feet. 

“You found somewhere yet?” he asks, and Beth sighs. They’ve been relatively civil since the divorce, the option of it easier than the alternative, and the distance between them has meant she’s been able to keep him out of her business fairly easily, even when he’s at his mom’s house for his weeks with the kids. She thinks he probably suspects that she and Rio are - - doing whatever it is they’re doing again, but thankfully hasn’t brought it up.

“I have a few leads,” she lies, getting out of the car, double checking it’s locked before walking down the street towards a small house on the corner. She checks the number, makes sure it’s the right one, before slipping the key into the mailbox and walking down the block towards the bus stop. 

“That’s great. Really great, Bethie. My mom’s been keeping an eye out for you too. Said she’d circled a couple of ads in the paper.” 

“Oh, she doesn’t need to do that,” Beth says, batting the air at her face as a fly buzzes close. 

“You know my mom, can’t help herself.” 

And Beth really wishes she could. Had struggled with the ads Judith has already sent her – places out of her budget and within walking distance of her own house, so that she can pop around whenever she’d like, and god, Beth thought that sort of thing was supposed to stop after the ink dried on a divorce.

“Man, you know it’s beautiful up here. I can’t wait until the kids see it all set up. My bro’s offered to help me paint their rooms, you know? For when they visit here. I mean, they’ll have my mom’s place too, of course, during the school semesters, but I think this is really going to feel like home for them too during the vacations. Plus, you know, they’ve been here before, so it’s like - - what was it that Dr. Bailey said? Consistency? It’ll be good for them to have that.” 

Beth hums in half-hearted agreement as he blabbers on, feeling a familiar clench of anxiety in her belly. Thirty days. 

Thirty days to find a house. 

No. 

Not a house.

A _home_ for her children. A new home, one that won’t make them hate her, or won’t feel like a consolation prize. Something that they can settle in, something that they can use to rebuild. Beth lets out a shaky breath, rubbing the side of her face with cold, tired fingers. 

Thirty days.

*

She’s three bourbons in and about twelve pages deep on the Detroit Realty website when her back-door slides open and Rio steps through. There’s a spring to his step that makes her squint at him a little uncertainly. She’s not really used to seeing that outside of him having a win, which too often equals a loss for her.

“You’re in a good mood,” she says, and he just shrugs at her, opening her fridge and pulling out a bottle of sparkling mineral water. She never used to buy it – doesn’t really like the fizz – but she’d learnt quickly that it had been Rio’s preference, and she’d taken to stocking it around the same time Rio had taken to sleeping over. 

“I had a good day,” he replies, cracking the bottle, and Beth looks at him expectantly from her seat behind the kitchen island, waits for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t, which only makes her roll her eyes. 

“I’m glad one of us did,” she says when she realises he has no intention of explaining, turning off the screen of her iPad and polishing off her drink. 

He hums in a sort of vague curiosity that Beth knows belies his actual interest, and she sighs, leaning back into her stool. 

“The house sold,” she says after a minute, and Rio quirks an eyebrow at her. 

“Ain’t that good?” 

“Sure,” Beth says, “But now I have a month to find somewhere to live, and my options currently seem to be two bedroom apartments on the other side of town or somebody’s pool house.” 

She tops up her drink with a sigh, leaning back in her seat. 

“Maybe I can turn the living room into a third bedroom,” she thinks out loud. “Give the kids the two real ones, and make one for myself in the main room. Turn it into a studio.”

 _Like a knock-off, outlet version of your old place,_ she almost adds, but thinks better of it. It’s not his fault she can’t afford what she needs. God, it’s only because of him she can afford anything at all. She has another long drink of bourbon, relishing in the warmth it drags through her from her mouth to her belly. 

“Marcus made the soccer team.” 

The words are so sudden, said so off-hand, that Beth blinks in surprise, and it’s nice – the genuine bud of joy for him that blooms in her stomach. She feels it on her face too, and knows it, the moment Rio sees it, his own lips quirking into a smile. 

“That’s really great. I know how much he wanted it.” 

Rio nods, finishing his mineral water in a long, final swallow before crushing the bottle in his fist, tossing it in a neat arc into the bin. 

“A yard’d be good,” Rio adds. “For him to practice in.” 

Beth makes a noise of agreement, raising her glass again and gesturing with it to the back-door Rio had only minutes before slipped through. 

“I’d say you could always use this one, but it’s not like it’ll be mine much longer.” 

Rio shifts his weight a little on the spot before walking forwards towards her kitchen sink. He tugs the curtain aside on the window overlooking it, his gaze taking in the backyard, forehead slightly furrowed, like he’s thinking, and Beth would be bemused by it all if she wasn’t a little bit used to this these days. She’s not sure Rio ever really switches off, that his mind ever stops ticking something over, if he ever really, truly unwinds. She thinks the closest she’s ever gotten him to that was a few months ago in his apartment where they’d collapsed after a particularly bad meeting with one of their clients, and she’d distracted him from his anger by letting him play her (and lecture her on) his 1940s jazz records and then blown him on his very stylish but cripplingly uncomfortable leather sofa. 

It takes Rio a moment to talk again, and in the quiet, Beth hears her phone buzz, picking it up to find a text from Ruby with a link to a house she’s already looked at. 

“Sounds like we both need a yard,” Rio drawls, and when Beth looks up at him, she’s surprised to find Rio having turned back around to face her, his back pressed against her kitchen sink. 

“Joys of having kids aged six to twelve,” she replies a little dryly, glancing back down at her phone and texting a quick _thanks_ followed by a love heart emoji back to Ruby. 

“Elizabeth.” 

His voice is tinged with exasperation, enough that Beth blinks up at him, confused as to why he’d be getting annoyed at her, only - - only - - 

The way he’s _looking_ at her. He can’t mean - - 

She reels back in her seat. 

“Are you - - “ she stops herself, can’t immediately find the words, scrambles briefly. “Are you suggesting we find somewhere together?” 

Rio shrugs, plays nonchalant, but there’s something to the way he avoids her gaze which tells her that that was absolutely what he was suggesting. Beth feels briefly lightheaded. 

“I’m here all the time, ain’t I? Honestly I’m gettin’ pretty tired of havin’ to drive across town to get inside you.” 

The look he gives her then is something between long-suffering and lewd, and if she were any closer, she’d make a point of slapping him, but just - - she thinks that would require more coordination than her currently short-circuiting brain is willing to accommodate. 

“I - -“ she flails briefly, waving her arms around, the bourbon sloshing out over the lip of her glass, splashing onto the kitchen island and her iPad, and Rio just stares at her, a carefully neutral expression on his face that she can’t easily read, and just - - what would that even _look_ like? How would they _explain_ it to anyone? What does it _mean_? It’s not like they’re a couple – not like they’ve ever talked about what it is they’re doing, and buying a house together feels like - - well, it feels like _something_ , but at the same time - - 

“I mean, the kids need a yard,” Beth says, looking at him, trying to gauge a reaction and Rio just hums in agreement, a grin tugging at the corners of his lips, and then he’s striding around the counter towards her. He slides his hands beneath her legs and yanks her off the stool, making her gasp and stumble into him, and then he’s shoving a hand down the front of her pants and making her gasp for a whole other reason.

*

“Mazel,” Annie says, rising up from her position on the floor just enough to clink her shot glass against Beth and Ruby’s before tossing it back. She pulls a face at the burn of it, before slapping it back down onto the coffee table she’s sitting behind. She makes a point of looking around, drinking in Beth’s living room. “It’s going to be so weird not getting drunk in here anymore.”

Ruby hums a noise of agreement from her spot beside Beth on the sofa, wriggling her bare toes against the carpet. 

“Or catching up with our number one babes on _Real Housewives_ here,” Ruby adds a little mournfully, and Beth sighs in agreement, letting her head drop back to the pillows on the couch. 

“At least it’s over, right? No more strangers doing walk-throughs, no more praying one of them might make an offer, no more treading water. God, at least now I have a timeline so I can start to plan. That’s something right?” 

And it is. The more Beth has thought about it, the more she thinks those thirty days (or, well, twenty-eight now) aren’t the worst thing in the world. She’s been in a stasis since Dean and her realised they had to sell to settle the last of their debts as a couple, and at least now she’s got something to swim towards, she thinks with a flush and a strange flutter in her chest that she immediately moves to squash. 

“Oh, for sure,” Ruby agrees. “Have you had any luck with places yet? I know the one I sent you is really close to the highway, so it’ll be loud, and it desperately needs a coat of paint and probably pest control, but it’s got three bedrooms, and the kids wouldn’t have to change schools. Plus it fits into your budget.” 

Beth nods, reaching out to touch Ruby’s arm in thanks and just - - okay, it’s now or never, right? Beth takes a breath, putting on her sweetest, most _nothing to see here_ voice. 

“Actually, there’s been a bit of a development.” 

And in hindsight, it’s probably the phrasing that sends Ruby pale and makes Annie’s eyebrows disappear into her hairline (a pretty impressive feat in and of itself), and Beth gestures flailingly around. 

“Nothing bad,” she insists, sucking in a breath. “In fact, really, it’s something that’s barely even anything. Something that is just - -” she rolls her hand out at the wrist, avoiding both their gazes. “Something.” 

“Hmmm,” Annie hums from the floor. “Do I need to get us another drink before we talk about this not-bad-barely-anything-something-something?” 

“No, don’t be silly,” and she laughs a little, but it’s too much, and Annie and Ruby seem to only further steel themselves. “Okay, maybe,” she relents and Annie springs to her feet, beelining for Beth’s bar cart. 

She’s still organising her thoughts in her head, reminding herself that this really isn’t that big of a deal, when she feels Ruby’s gaze on her, turning around to meet it. They stare at each other for a moment, before Ruby squints, makes a humming noise in the back of her throat and finally says:

“B. Start talking.” 

Beth takes a breath. 

“Okay, well, I was talking to Rio while we were - - in a meeting,” oh god, that’s - - Beth flushes at Ruby’s knowing look, can feel the bubble of babble in her throat cresting, but powers through it. “And I told him Dean and I were selling the house, and I asked him for, you know, like, a little extra money or a raise or something to help me out with finding somewhere.” 

“A raise on your fifty percent?” Ruby asks, and Beth nods vehemently, returning Ruby’s _are you out of your mind?_ look with her own _who’s side are you on?_ look before powering through. 

“Anyway, he said no, and then we were at a – another meeting a couple of days ago, and he proposed that we - -“ she fumbles for the words in her head. “Consolidate our assets. In our partnership.” 

Annie’s frowning at her, confused when she passes Beth and Ruby their drinks, and Beth is still in the process of willing Annie to just _get it_ , when Ruby makes a loud sound revealing that she does. 

“I’m sorry,” Ruby says, her voice loud enough to echo off the ceiling. “Are you telling us that you’re moving in with Gangfriend?” 

“WHAT?” Annie shouts, and Beth’s face burns as she downs her shot, regretting the fact that it makes her face hotter than it already is almost instantly. 

“I’m not _moving in with him_ ,” Beth says, trying her best to keep her voice light and level. “We’re just buying a place together.” 

It’s enough to make Annie laugh, almost hysterically, and Ruby give her the most deadpan look Beth thinks she’s ever seen in her life (actually, no: the look on her face when she realised she was sleeping with Rio again is still probably the winner). 

“Oh,” Ruby says now, tossing back her own shot and slamming it down on the coffee table. “So he’s going to buy a place with you, but keep living in his apartment?” 

Beth frowns. 

“No.”

“No he’s not buying a place with you, or no he’s not going to keep living in his apartment.”

Beth and Ruby stare at each other for a minute before Beth wriggles down in her seat. 

“He’s planning to lease his apartment out.” 

“And live with you?” Ruby supplies. “In the house that you’re planning on buying together?”

And so, sure, maybe she flails a little bit, waving her arms around, and Ruby and Annie’s gazes don’t leave her, and so finally she just - - she caves. 

“Yes,” she admits, and Annie starts making a noise somewhere between a scream and a cackle, so Beth makes quick work of stealing her sister’s untouched shot glass and downing it before getting up, beelining back to the bar cart for something to do with her hands (and ideally get herself drunk enough to forget this conversation). 

“Man, who’d have thought Beth would wife a crime lord,” Annie muses, flopping down into Beth’s spot on the couch at the same time Ruby gets to her feet, striding towards Beth, focused and intense. 

“So what does this mean? You’re, what, B? His girlfriend now? Stepmom to his son? Is he stepdad to your kids?” 

“What? _No_. We’re just,” Beth flails her free hand in Ruby’s direction, her other hand shaking a little as she pours her drink. “We’re not even a couple, we just…we see each other sometimes.” 

“Well, you’re about to be seeing each other all the time,” Ruby says. “As what? His live-in booty call?” 

The words are sharp, direct, and Beth blinks hard, her cheeks reddening, her chest clenching as she avoids Ruby’s gaze. She looks over just enough to know Ruby’s left her shot glass on the table, so grabs another two from the second tray of the bar cart, filling them up. 

“Nobody says booty call anymore,” Annie says, and Ruby must give her a look, because, in a softer tone, she adds, “They usually just use the eggplant and peach emoji.” 

Beth passes Ruby one of the shot glasses, but before she can move to give Annie hers, Ruby is sighing, her hand gently coming to rest on Beth’s arm. 

“I’m not trying to be a jerk,” Ruby says, honestly, earnestly. “You just told me you were being careful. This isn’t careful, Beth. I mean, Jesus, you can’t even tell us what you are.”

“We’re business partners,” Beth says, a little too quickly, and Annie laughs a little.

“I mean, so are Ben and Jerry, but last I checked, they don’t bone on the regular and live together with their like, nine million children.” 

“Don’t say bone,” Beth says, but Ruby hasn’t taken her eyes, or her hand off Beth. 

“Have you told Dean?” 

Beth pauses, her body tensing, her eyes wide on Ruby’s and it takes her a minute to shake her head, her toes curling underneath her, and she holds the bottle of tequila a little closer to her chest. Ruby sighs in reply, letting Beth go and holding up her hands in surrender. 

“You know I’ll support whatever decision you make, but this is a lot, Beth, and you can’t pretend that it’s not.” 

They’re quiet for a minute after that, and then it’s Annie looking between the two of them, her own eyes wide, face marred in unhappiness at them fighting, when she suddenly says, “Can we just get really drunk now please?” and Beth is inclined to agree.

*

She’s been waiting for almost ten minutes, back against the door of her minivan, the spring sun burning her cheeks, when Rio finally pulls his car into the spot beside her.

“You’re late,” she tells him in lieu of hello, her eyebrow arched, and her arms folded over her chest, and he just looks at her, lips slightly parted as he closes the driver’s door behind him. He makes no small show of giving her a once over, before burying his hands in the pockets of his jacket, shrugging lightly, and tilting his head sideways towards the realtor’s office, beckoning her over into step beside him. 

And she hates that it annoys her, him striding forwards, leaving _her_ the one to catch-up when he’d been the one to show up late. When he’d been the one to drum home the appointment time in her bedroom that morning as they’d gotten dressed, his fingers slipping into the panties she’d only just put on as she breathlessly repeated the address back to him. 

“How do you even know her anyway?” Beth asks now when she gets to him, and Rio walks easily to the front door, holding it open for her and gesturing her inside. 

“She’s on the payroll,” he drawls, and at Beth’s briefly surprised look, he just grins at her. “I invest in property, ma, you know that.” 

And she does, kind of, at least. He’s gotten better over the last few months at telling her vague details about his many ( _many_ ) businesses, but the way he tells her isn’t exactly clear. She’d only even found out about his property hustles because she’d made an offhand comment about wanting to go to a particular restaurant that was always booked out, and he’d taken her the next night, offering only a vague statement of being a stakeholder and maybe ownin’ a part of it to explain himself. 

It was that way with all of it though – an offhand comment here or there about his gallery opening, or a fire in the kitchens at his bar, or bringing in a type of plant from Beijing that was illegal in the states. (“Everything’s got a price,” he’d told her with a shrug, pinching one of the lemonade scones she’d been making for the kids’ lunches. “And I keep mine high.”)

“Sure,” she says now. “But most people don’t…” 

She trails off, unsure where to go with that. It’s not exactly like she knows anyone else like Rio – but still, the more she finds out about him, the more she’s surprised to uncover this small, private army of people he employs to keep his life running smoothly – lawyers and accountants and personal doctors and chef’s that’ll make a home visit in a pinch. All of them carefully handpicked for competence, loyalty and discretion, and it had taken Annie the better part of a week to stop using a Marlon Brando Godfather voice whenever Rio came up in conversation after Beth had told her. 

Like he’s read her mind, Rio just looks at her knowingly, a smirk on his face as he gestures for her to continue – to tell him exactly what _most people_ do and don’t do, and it’s enough to make her roll her eyes, adjust her handbag strap over her arm and head into the building. 

And in hindsight it really shouldn’t surprise her, but still – Beth’s a little alarmed at just how _nice_ this office is. Almost too nice with it’s long, sleek floors and marble counters, it’s glass walls and enormous water feature, dazzling against the wall. There’s a painting Beth vaguely recognises as one Rio had briefly had stored in his apartment – something somehow both abstract and soft, and she’d thought it was nice, even if Rio had scoffed slightly at her taste in the moment, told her _nah, ain’t nothin’ special about it, darlin’_ , and told her it was a gift for an associate (a not particularly special one, she’d guessed from his look at the time), and, well. She guesses she knows who that associate is now. 

Still, she can’t help but feel suddenly remarkably underdressed, even in a new floral blouse and one of her nicer pair of jeans. She clears her throat a little, resisting the urge to backstep, only to have Rio’s hand find the small of her back, splaying there and pushing her firmly forwards.

They don’t make it far anyway – not even to the front desk before a woman seems to materialise out of thin air. She’s taller than Beth, and the sort of aggressive thin and only-just-obvious-botox that Beth’s not used to seeing outside of morning show hosts or weather women, and she exudes that same specific sort of performative energy as she descends upon them. 

“Christopher!” 

“Lisa,” he nods at her, pushing Beth forwards enough to stand beside him, and she clocks it, the way Lisa’s eyes find her with surprise. It’s all she can do to square her shoulders to stave off squirming. It’s not like she’s not used to it at this point anyway, the naked confusion on people’s faces at seeing someone like _Rio_ with someone like _her_. 

“And this must be,” Lisa’s eyes ghost over Rio’s genially smiling face, seeking out confirmation, which Rio fails to give, and god, Beth thinks irritably, he’s _enjoying_ this.

“Beth,” Beth says finally, putting the other woman out of her misery and reaching out to shake her hand. 

Lisa blinks gratefully over at her, taking Beth’s hand and gesturing them back towards her office, her tall heels clipping down the polished floors of the office. She settles them down on the other side of her desk before calling on her assistant to get them all coffees and moving to sit herself. 

“So, buying a house together, that’s quite the step,” Lisa says with a put-upon enthusiasm, and Beth blinks at her, briefly surprised, because she _knows_ that tone, and it’s not confusion at the image of them, it’s _jealousy_. Beth sits up a little straighter, clears her throat, glancing sideways at Rio who she thinks must’ve heard it too, but he pays it no attention. 

“All in the timin’,” Rio says, and Lisa makes a loud noise of agreement. 

“Of course,” she says. “And when it’s right, it’s right. How long did you say you two had been together?” 

And Beth could almost roll her eyes, because of course they _haven’t_ , and the implication from Lisa is as discreet as it is clear. She’s worked with Rio before, maybe even fucked him, and she had no idea that Beth existed. 

Beth blinks, clenches her hands at her knees, Ruby’s words from the other night echoing in her head, and then Lisa’s too, because, god, what constitutes as together? His hands on her naked thighs, pushing against her in that filthy bathroom? The first time in her bed? His apartment? At the auto auction? The time he’d found out Dean had moved out and spent the better part of three days in her bed, in her shower, bending her over the arm of her couch? 

Beth flushes, finding herself relieved when Lisa’s assistant pops back into the room with their coffees, checking Rio out unsubtly as she distributes their drinks, and god, Beth thinks. Is this _normal_ for him? 

“Around a year,” Rio says, when Beth doesn’t answer. “But we known each other longer.” 

“How sweet,” Lisa simpers. “How’d you meet?” 

“Work,” Beth says at the same time Rio says, “Yeah, she stole from me.” 

Beth blinks, head twisting around, and Rio’s grinning a little. 

“Didn’t mean to, y’know? She just found herself with somethin’ that belonged to me and took it home with her, and I swung by and picked it up. Ain’t that right, darlin’?” 

He grabs Beth’s hand then, pulling it to his mouth, grazing a smile against her knuckles, and Beth rolls her eyes at him, pushing her hand up just slightly in a move he can see is a mock punch, but nobody else truly could. His grin only widens as he bites her knuckles gently in reply. 

“You know me,” she says, a little too sweetly. “A regular criminal.”

It’s enough to make him bark on a laugh, turning his bite into a kiss before letting go of her hand entirely, and turning his attention back to Lisa, who has the distinct look of somebody who has no idea what she’s stumbled in on, and _oh_ , Beth thinks, the realisation hitting her like a weirdly pleasant slap. They haven’t slept together at all. 

“That’s a very unique meet cute,” Lisa offers, and Beth nods, scrunching up her nose. 

“I don’t think you can call us particularly traditional.” 

It’s enough to make Rio laugh again, turning his head away from them. He opens his mouth as if to reply, only to shift suddenly, his phone going off in his pocket. He yanks it out, reads something, and then types back a quick message before swinging up out of his seat. 

“I got business,” he says, and Beth blinks up at him, startled. 

“What?” 

“Business,” he repeats, tapping something else onto his phone, and Beth lurches to her feet beside him. 

“Okay, I’ll come with you.” 

“Nah,” he says, still typing into his phone. Beth cranes her neck to try and see what he’s typing, but he holds his phone closer to his face, out of her eye-level, and Beth frowns. “You should stay here. Do this, yeah?” 

“R - - _Christopher_ ,” she tries, and he just looks at her, his gaze leaving no room for arguments. 

“This ain’t your department,” he tells her pointedly, and Beth’s blood runs cold. She opens her mouth to ask where he’s going, who this is, how he’ll be coming home to her (he tends to avoid her when he gets hurt, she knows that, but he’s come back enough with day-old bruises and split lips and broken ribs that have started making her own heart somehow feel like it’s catching on her teeth), but he moves on before she gets the chance. 

“You know what I like,” he directs at Lisa now, dropping his gaze back to where his thumbs are rapidly typing something out on his phone. “Just get what she does too, yeah?” 

“Great,” Lisa titters, eyes darting between the two of them, unsure of what’s happening. She gestures loosely for Beth to sit down again. “Do we have a ballpark price point we’re looking at?” 

Beth opens her mouth to reply, only for Rio to cut her off again. 

“Nah, we good.” 

Beth’s eyes widen, looking furiously at Rio before back to Lisa.

“We do actually. I’m thinking - - ” 

“I said what I said,” Rio repeats, finally pulling his gaze off his phone again, looking firmly at Beth. He pockets his phone. “We’re good.” 

He closes the distance between them in two long steps, grabbing her chin and pulling her in for a quick, deep kiss that leaves her unfairly breathless, his other hand sliding down to grab a handful of her ass, before he’s letting go of her, nodding at Lisa and starting towards the door. As he pulls it open, he glances back at her, adding: 

“I’ll see you tonight, yeah? You can tell me how you go.” 

“ _Wait_ ,” Beth hisses, but she’s too late. He’s out the door and out of sight before she can think any more of it. 

There’s a moment of silence where Beth just looks out at the spot Rio’s vacated, a mix of emotions she can’t give a name to swirling around in her gut. It takes another moment, but then Lisa’s there, breaking up the silence with a quick, sharp cough. When Beth’s gaze finds her, Lisa squirms a little, tossing her hair over her shoulder and leaning across her desk. 

“Now, Christopher mentioned on the phone that a few more bedrooms would be required for the new home? And he said a second family room would be essential, is that right?” 

Beth blinks, and finally sighs in surrender, sliding into the chair.

“Yes, that’s right,” Beth says, watching as Lisa loads up her computer.

*

It’s more than an hour of looking at bright, shining, _big_ properties on Lisa’s Mac Book, before Beth finally reaches the end of her good manners. She thanks Lisa profusely, sliding out of her chair and promising to think about it all, before basically high tailing it out of the office. She clambers into the driver’s seat of her minivan, shoving the key in the ignition and then just - -

She just sits there. 

For minutes, tens of minutes.

Maybe almost an hour. 

And then? 

Fuck it. 

She calls Ruby.

“This is not a problem I should be complaining about,” Beth starts the second Ruby answers. “I feel like a lot of people would kill to have this problem.” 

There’s a bubble of hysteria in her throat which Beth tries to swallow down, and she just - - listens - - to the steady pace of Ruby’s breathing, the muffled sound of coffee machines and customers and doughnut batter splashing in the background, and god, is she really going to complain to Ruby about _this?_

“I can’t help if you don’t tell me what the problem is,” Ruby says, and then, as if she’d read her thoughts. “Please ignore the sounds of highschool drop outs burning their hands in oil behind me.” 

Beth laughs, can’t help herself, and swipes at her face, surprised to find her fingers catching a tear she hadn’t realised she’d cried. Her forehead furrows, remembering how mad Ruby had been the other night, and god, but - - but there’s no one else she wants to talk to about this.

“You can’t judge me again.”

“I can do whatever I want, and I might judge you, I don’t know yet, you haven’t told me what we’re talking about,” Ruby replies. “But you know there is literally nothing you can do that will make me love you less. We have literally dumped a body together, B. Come on, do your worst.”

And Beth just - - Beth tells her almost all of it. About Rio’s realtor, about the way Lisa had looked at her, about him not taking her with him on the job (she leaves out the part where he could get hurt, about how much it scares her, twists her up, the thought of him getting hurt again. Can’t speak those words aloud, not now, not yet), and just about - - about these _houses_.

“I mean, they don’t even have listed prices,” she says, still a little breathless. “They just say serious offers only, like, what does that even mean?” 

“It’s up a price bracket, that’s for sure,” Ruby agrees on the other end of the line. “But he obviously has the cash.” 

“Half of these houses look like they belong on reality shows though, Ruby. Like, they’re meant for - - ” she flails briefly. “Women on Bravo! Not - - _Beth’s_ in the suburbs.”

Ruby makes a vague, joking, impressed noise over the line, and Beth’s grip finally loosens on the steering wheel, her body folding back into the seat. She runs a free hand over the thigh of her jeans, smoothing out the fabric, loosely massaging her leg. God, she’d been tense.

“But I mean, come on, are you surprised?” Ruby asks, and, at Beth’s squandering silence, gently adds, “He’s a gang boss, B.” 

“So am I,” Beth insists, and Ruby hums in agreement. 

“Did I say you weren’t? Rio’s just, _Rio_ , you know? That boy is loaded up, and he just…” she pauses, tries to find the words, then finally says: “It sounds like he wants to spend the money on this. On _you_. And hell, he’s taking on four extra kids, he probably wants somewhere with enough space to give himself some, if you know what I mean.”

Beth snorts, swiping at her face, feeling silly and hurt and just - - _tired_ , when she says, “I get that.” 

And really, she hates it – how gentle Ruby’s tone is when she asks, “Well, what are we talking about then, B?”

*

“We need to talk about money,” she says, and he glances over at her from where he’s shucking out of his jean jacket at the foot of her bed, his face twisting in something between exasperation and annoyance. 

“I already told you, we ain’t renegotiating. You splittin’ your fifty with your sister and your friend is _your_ business.” 

It’s enough to make Beth roll her eyes as she finishes moisturising her bare legs before slipping into her pyjama pants. 

“That message was received loud and clear,” she says a little dryly, tossing back the sheets and climbing into her bed. Rio makes a noise in the back of his throat like he doesn’t quite believe her, but finishes undressing all the same. He makes quick work of dropping his shoes by the door, his jacket, shirt, jeans and socks finding her laundry basket before he collapses into bed beside her, only in his underwear. 

She has no idea where he’s been today, not since he left her at the realtor’s office. He’d texted to say he’d be at hers by dinner, but had shown up hours after it, cagey when she’d asked where he’d been, his knuckles bruised and a biting, furious edge to his expression that had made her smooth her fingers against his skull and massage them there until he was pliant and purring against her neck. 

He hasn’t showered yet, and she resists the urge to prod him about it. It’s not that he smells bad – never really does – but his cologne has mostly worn off, the sweat and toil of the day slick at his skin, and she’s sure she can see the fine fragments of warehouse dust catching in his impossibly long eyelashes. She frowns, feeling him curl a little at her side, his head burying in the pillow beside her, and she thinks maybe she should let this go, at least for tonight, but - - but _no_. It was just like Ruby had said. Just like _he_ always said. 

Boundaries. 

“We need to have a budget.” 

The words are enough to make him lift his head, to squint at her, and Beth watches him take her in, processing her words. 

“For what?” 

“The house,” Beth says. “You told Lisa no budget, and that’s - - I mean, some of the places she was showing me were just - -”

And god, she’d _practiced_ this – written a script in her head that would make him _get it_ , but now the words have escaped her, and she’s left dry mouthed, embarrassed, wringing her hands. She shuffles down a little in the bed until she’s basically lying down beside him, her body stiff and her neck curved awkwardly at the headboard as she tries to steel herself. 

“I can’t afford those places,” she settles on finally, avoiding his gaze, and god, her pride catches on its way down. “I can’t pay millions of dollars for a house. I won’t make half of that by selling this one, not when I have to finish paying off three mortgages, and split whatever’s left with Dean, I can’t - -”

Before she can keep going, Rio interrupts her by tossing one big hand over both of her own, the weight of his movement pushing them down to flatten against her own belly, and god, she hadn’t even realised she’d been flailing that much. 

“Right,” he tells her, dismissive as he buries his face back in the pillow. “You don’t need to though, yeah?” 

Beth stares at him, the full implication of his words tapping on something somehow both raw and pinched inside of her. She yanks her hands out from underneath his own, glowering down at him, and man, she really wishes he didn’t have his face buried in the pillow so he could get the full impact of it.

“I don’t want you to buy me a house,” she hisses. 

It’s enough to make him groan, to lift his head enough to turn and look at her. 

“I ain’t buyin’ you shit,” he says, pulling his hand off her belly and rolling onto his side. “I’m buyin’ us a place to live.” 

“I’m all the extras though, aren’t I? I’m the second family room you told Lisa we had to have, I’m _at least_ two extra bedrooms, I’m - - ” 

The words are suddenly all gone again, tears left to prickle at the corners of her eyes instead, and god, the last thing she wants to do is _cry_ over this. She sets her jaw, blinks back her tears, wishes he couldn’t see it all, wishes he didn’t lift his hand with a sigh, deflating as he cups her cheek. He pushes her hair back with his index finger while he swipes away an errant tear with his calloused thumb. 

He doesn’t say anything though, just waits for her, and Beth sucks in a shaky breath. 

“I’ve done that, okay? And look where it got me. I can’t own no part of the house my children live in again. I _won’t_. If we’re doing this, I need us to be equal. I need us to own it together.” 

It takes her a minute to drum up the willingness to look at him again, and when she does, she finds him staring back with half-lidded eyes, his jaw rocking back and forth, like he’s chewing over her words, like he’s wrestling with how he wants to respond, and she can see it, the moment that he decides. 

“I’ll call Lisa tomorrow and let her know,” he says slowly, his voice slightly pained, whether at the thought of being on a budget or Beth getting her way, she has no idea. Still, she can’t quite stop the million-watt grin from bursting across her face. 

“Thank you.” 

She leans in, kissing him quickly on the tip of his nose, then his shuttered eyelid, then his cheek, avoiding his lips until he growls, rolling over and straddling her fast enough she squeals, before she surges up to kiss him properly and maybe? Maybe they can make this work after all.

*

And look, Beth will be the first to admit that the first house isn’t great.

“So it’s a bit of a fixer-upper,” she tries when Lisa leaves to give them some time to, as she says, _soak it in_ , and Rio just arches an eyebrow at her, his mouth set in a thin line. 

“It’s a waste of our time, is what it is,” he tells her, his voice loud enough that he clearly wants to make sure Lisa’s heard, and god, is this why he bought her that painting he obviously didn’t like? Beth shushes him, hissing a _don’t be rude_ which only makes him roll his eyes.

“It’s in our budget.”

“ _Your_ budget,” he insists, and then it’s Beth’s turn to roll her eyes. It’s enough to make him huff out a breath, gesturing around the spacious kitchen (because it is spacious, Beth thinks graciously. It’s just that it’s a lot of _empty_ space – the counter so small, offering so little cooking space, that Beth is pretty sure she’d be cooking for five kids on the floor).

“Ma, I don’t even need to bring in my property inspector to know this place is gonna cost twice the asking price to bring it into line.” 

She flails briefly about, and Rio rocks his jaw. It’s been a few days since whatever happened at that meeting, and his knuckles are still mostly raw. She knows better than to probe – knows there’s no faster way to make him put a wall between them than by asking him what happened to him, but whatever it was has succeeded in putting him in a sour mood. 

Although she doesn’t think this house is helping. 

“We don’t have to buy the first place we look at,” she says now. “It’s called house hunting for a reason.” 

He opens his mouth to reply, and she can already feel herself bristling in anticipation of his words when Lisa steps back into the room, swiping through something on her iPad, ready to get their thoughts.

“Soooo?” Lisa asks brightly, and Rio opens his mouth again to tell her _exactly_ what he thinks, but Beth steps in quickly, cutting him off and shooting him a warning look. 

“It doesn’t feel quite right for us,” she says, a little too sweetly, ignoring the way Rio huffs out an annoyed breath behind her. “Maybe we can head to the next one?”

*

They look at another two houses that day, another four on Thursday, and none of them are _wrong_ exactly – but there’s always something that’s a deal breaker for one of them – they’re in the wrong school district, or too far from Marcus’ mother’s, or Annie and Ruby, or there’s only one bathroom (which, with seven people living there isn’t really an option), or the yard is too small. They find one almost-maybe, enough _almost_ at least for Rio to send out his guy, but the inspector had found deep rooted mould in the ceiling, warmed by the shifting roof, that would be hard to remedy without replacing both.

Beth groans, dropping a duffel bag of fake cash onto the coffee table, kicking off her shoes and collapsing back onto Annie’s sofa. 

“No dream house?” Annie says, and Beth groans all over again. 

“I’d settle for anything we could agree on at this point,” she says glumly. “I liked one of them today, but Rio hated it. Do you know what he called it? Cheesy!”

“He knows he’s moving in with the Queen of Cheese, doesn’t he?” Annie says, and Beth gives her a look, taking the mug of coffee Annie passes to her. 

“We’re never going to find somewhere, and the clock’s ticking. The couple that have bought my place asked if they could come through it again. They want to start thinking about what they’re going to do with it, so my guess is this deal is definitely going to close, which gives me - -” Beth does the math in her head. “Three weeks and two days to find somewhere to live.” 

“Yikes,” Annie agrees, taking a sip of her own coffee and unzipping the duffel. She pulls one of her dining room chairs over to the table, making neat work of organising the stacks into little piles. She’s worked out her own system for washing her cut of the cash recently, having made her own little networks with a string of young guys selling car parts on Craigslist which they use at both the auction and the dealership (Beth is pretty sure they’re stolen, but they haven’t had an issue yet). 

“And Rio’s being no help,” Beth says now, finding herself getting annoyed again. She takes a sip of her coffee, scowling into her mug. “He keeps telling me I have _champagne taste_.” 

He hadn’t even had to finish the expression – champagne taste on a beer budget. She’d said the very thing to Annie when she and Greg had split and they’d been trying to find her an apartment on her grocery store salary. Only where Annie had rolled her eyes about the whole thing and conceded it, coming from Rio, it had wounded Beth more than she’d care to admit. It wasn’t that she was looking for luxury - - it was just she was looking for a _home_.

(After the last place, he’d dropped a hand to her knee as he’d driven them back to work, squeezing it lightly as he’d said, “You can have your champagne budget, ma, all you gotta do is ask,” but they’d both known she’d rather swallow her tongue than do that.) 

Beth sighs, dropping her head back against the couch. She needs to find somewhere. She needs to start packing, she - - glancing at the clock on the wall, groans. Needs to pick the kids up from school in an hour. Dropping her mug back to the coffee table, she’s starting to scoot to the edge of the couch to help Annie sort through the cash when her phone buzzes in her pocket. 

She grabs it, surprised to find Lisa’s number glowing up at her. Beth answers it. 

“Beth!” Lisa enthuses. “So glad I caught you. A place has _just_ come on the market, and honestly, I think it’s a winner. Any chance you can meet now?”

*

The street is shady in the best way – a canopy of trees entwining their branches over the road, giving everything a dappled effect as Beth pulls her minivan over outside the address Lisa had texted her. She can see Rio’s Cadillac in the driveway, Lisa’s increasingly familiar, bright red Honda Civic parked beside it, and Beth smooths out her blouse, locks her car, and heads up towards the house.

The chatter of sparrows fills her ears, the sound of children laughing, the musical chimes of somebody, somewhere, playing piano with the windows open. Beth inhales deeply, looking across the neatly groomed yard to a farmhouse style house built of slatted wood painted grey, lavender planted by the front walls leaving a thumb smudge of purple against the side of the house, and the air fragrant. 

Beth knocks hesitantly on the front door, feeling something uncurl pleasantly in her when she hears the sound of Lisa’s heels clipping down what can only be polished floorboards. Lisa pulls open the door with a wide, generous smile.

“Beth! I’m so pleased you made it. Christopher wasn’t sure how much time he had, so I’ve taken him through already, so I’ll give you a quick look down here before I take you up to meet him.” 

Stepping back, Lisa lets Beth walk inside, and god, should it feel this instant? She casts wide eyes around the foyer, watching it open up into a living room to the left, a family room to the right, a tall wooden staircase in the heart of the foyer, leading to an open second floor. She was right about the polished wood – dark, rustic timber, that compliments the cream walls and the large bay windows. 

“Now, it doesn’t have everything, let’s start with that – no pool, and the laundry room will need a fit out – I can only imagine the mess five kids make, but it _does_ have both a fireplace, and a top of the line central heating system, that second family room, and a kitchen to die for.”

And she’s not wrong, Beth thinks, following Lisa around through the living room, the dining room, through a wide, handsome rustic-style door to the kitchen. It’s _huge_ with wall to wall white cabinets and a polished wooden benchtop. The kitchen island in the centre is bigger than the one she has at her old home, matching the cabinets, the sides hollowed out for shelves, and god, Beth wants to drape herself over it now for its sheer storage space alone. 

“Right?” Lisa says, nodding, before moving them along. They have a quick look at the large back yard, complete with a thriving herb garden, before Lisa takes them upstairs, showing Beth the bathrooms and the smaller bedrooms, and finally leading her to the master bedroom. 

Vaguely, Beth can hear Lisa tittering at her side about square feet and air flow, about light, but all she can see is Rio’s long, lean form standing by the windows, casting shadows down the polished floorboards. 

“I’ll leave you two to talk about it,” she says, before walking back down the hall and down the stairs. 

There’s something fluttering in Beth’s chest at the sight of him, at the moment, she’s not sure, but she walks over to him, coming to a stop by his side. She doesn’t look up at him, not yet. 

“It’s a good yard,” she says, and Rio hums in agreement. 

“You like it,” he tells her knowingly, and Beth nods, her gaze finally shifting from looking out the window to meet his. 

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that? It’s more of a change for you than it is for me.” 

Because it is, Beth thinks – she’s seen two of his apartments now, the one from last year, the one he’d left behind the day after she’d broken into it, and his newer one. Both of them inner city, exposed brick, trendy little hubs in thriving, loud, metropolitan locations. A far cry from a suburban farmhouse in the leafy greens. 

“I don’t mind change,” he replies. “It’s all just flippin’ a game, ain’t it?” 

And that’s - - Beth frowns, something about the way he phrased it planting a seed of doubt in her gut, and she thinks maybe she should ask him if he’s changed his mind, if this is just an experiment, a _game_ for him to be played out, that she thought they were _past_ that, but - - but she can’t quite summon the will to find out. She refocuses her gaze out the window, taking in the way the gentle breeze ruffles the herb beds below them.

“No pool,” she says with a joking sigh, and Rio shrugs, nods his head out the window towards the horizon, over the cresting suburb. 

“There’s a tennis club not far from here. You can swim there.” 

And she knows the place, somewhere where the annual membership costs the better part of a kidney, and she snorts. 

“Sure. I’m sure I’ll fit right in with my beer budget, like you keep reminding me.”

He casts her an amused look at that, tilting his chin up slightly. 

“I’m already a member. Can probably just add you to my account.”

Beth blinks, feels her jaw drop as she looks over at him. 

“Wouldn’t mind seein’ you in your bathin’ suit, seein’ you all wet,” he smirks to himself, lewd. “Not that I don’t see you soakin’ up your panties on the daily.” 

Beth slaps him lightly, rolling her eyes when he laughs, and she knows him enough to know he’s going to try and grab her, get her flushed and bothered before Lisa come back, so she takes a quick step aside, out of reach, looking around the master bedroom. It’s probably a little bigger than her one at home and it’ll be strange, being on the second floor, losing the convenience of the French doors to the patio, but still. 

Of course, unless Rio wants this one, she thinks, making quick work of mapping out the house in her head. 

“Only six bedrooms,” Beth realises, biting the inside of her cheek. “I guess the girls can share.” 

She walks forwards, peaking into the en suite. The bathtub is big, and sleek against the tiny blue tiles, and Beth almost moans at it. She loves having baths, glass of wine in hand, a book, her hair curling wet at the base of her neck. Loves it best when Rio slips in behind her, distracts her with his mouth at the shell of her ear and his fingers - - well. She blushes, dragging her own fingers over the rim of the tub, she shivers a little at the promise of it. 

She’s so lost in the thought she doesn’t realise Rio has stepped into the doorway of the en suite, leaning bodily against the frame as he watches her. It takes him a minute to speak, but when he does his voice is a deceptively lazy drawl. 

“See, I kinda figured one of the perks of livin’ with you was gonna be settin’ the habit of wakin’ up beside you.”

Beth blinks over at him, at his careful look, the weight of his words, and suddenly blushes bright, and _of course_ they’d be the ones sharing a bedroom, that’s - - that’s what this _is_. Beth clears her throat, too mortified to summon the words, and she keeps her gaze steadfastly away from him, finding the small blue tiles on the sink splashback suddenly fascinating.

“You want separate bedrooms?” and he asks it genuinely, openly, and without judgement in a way that makes Beth look at him, at the uncertainty that she so rarely sees on him, and she thinks about how cold her bed feels now, on the nights he has Marcus, on the nights he doesn’t slip beneath her sheets, easy as a dream, the nights she spends alone. 

“No,” she says, and she bites her lip, looks up at him almost shyly. “I don’t.” 

The grin that spreads across his face is softer than anything she’s used to, but he covers it quickly with something smug and playful. 

“Cool,” is all he says, burying his hands in the pockets of his jacket, and Beth tries to will the colour out of her cheeks.

“You still haven’t told me if _you_ like it,” Beth says, trying to regain control of herself, and Rio laughs, tilting his head out the door to lead them back downstairs to Lisa. 

“Yeah, ma, I like it.”

*

“We need to talk to the kids,” Beth says, squirting lotion onto her hand and propping her bare leg up on her bedroom reading chair, massaging it in. Her skin’s still pink from her shower, warm to the touch, and she shivers a little at the coolness of the cream. It really isn’t all that cold, but Beth’s only in a pair of mint lace underwear, a bra, and a loose, pale blue t-shirt that stops at her hips.

“I want to go pick up some boxes to start packing in the next few days, and I’d like to show them where we’re moving to, which means we need to tell them about,” Beth flushes a little, and, god, how can she still find it this hard to say it, massaging her calves a little harder, avoiding eye contact. “You know. Us.” 

Rio blinks up at her from the other chair ( _Dean’s_ chair), still fully dressed, his thumbs working rapidly across his phone screen, the paperwork from the house sale in his lap. 

It had moved quickly once they’d decided. Rio had sent in his guy to do an inspection of the property that very afternoon, and once it got the all clear, he’d had Gretchen swoop in to handle the negotiation and then the sale with Lisa. There hadn’t been much back and forth, which had been a relief, and it was less than a week before Beth was signing her name beside Rio’s (or, well, _Christopher’s_ ) and staring down the barrel of her own thirty-day window. 

“And I’ve still got to tell Dean,” she says with a frown. “And look at our options for the kids’ schools. And pack. _And_ work out what I’m going to do between getting out of this house and into the new one.” 

Because god, she’s got to be out of here in a little over two weeks, and she can’t move into the farmhouse until next month. She drops her leg from the chair, putting the other one up instead, squirting more lotion on her hand as she does it and planting a dollop on her thigh for later before leaning down to roughly palm at her shin. 

She doesn’t even entirely realise how aggressively she’s doing it until Rio drops the paperwork and his phone to the small table between the chairs, and scoots to the edge of his own chair, batting her hand away in the process. His fingers are warm and calloused when they move to cup the back of her leg, holding her in place, while his other hand drifts up to her thigh, dragging through the lotion she’d left there. It’s enough to make her breath hitch when he looks up at her through his lashes, a bemused expression on his face as he lowers the lotioned hand to her ankle and starts gently massaging his way up her leg. 

“You want to talk to them together or on your own?” 

“I don’t know,” Beth admits, her voice smaller than she’d like. The kids know Rio well enough now, love having him around, ask after him when he’s not at dinner, but this is - - it’s different, and it’s too real now. “What about you?” 

“On my own first,” he says, the hand at the back of her calf starting to knead the muscle there. “Then maybe together with all of ‘em. Think it’ll be less of a shock for pop though, his mom already lives with someone else.”

Beth nods, breath catching when the hand at the back of her calf pulls her forwards a little closer then slides up to grip hard at the back of her thigh. His other hand slides up the front, briefly caressing her knee before moving up to massage the lotion into her thigh. Beth’s eyelids flutter shut at the soothing circles, at the firm grip he has on the back of her thigh, keeping her in place, only opening them again when he tightens his grip, and says: 

“Grab it.” 

Beth blinks her eyes open, seeing Rio jerking his head to the side table between them, at the bottle of lotion. Sensing the instruction (and the growing dryness of his hand), she picks it up, uncapping the lid and going to squirt some of it into her hand, moving to take over again, but he shakes his head. 

“Nah, put it straight on, yeah? Right here.” 

He rubs his thumb over a cluster of freckles at the middle of her thigh, and Beth does as he asks, blushing a little at the image of the pearl-coloured lotion dribbling down her thigh. Rio grins, but doesn’t acknowledge just what it looks like, his thumbs catching it as he continues gently massaging her leg. 

“Send the kids to Car Man’s,” Rio says. “When you’re between houses. You stay with me.” 

Something in Beth’s chest clenches in a way she can’t explain, and she glances down at him, her hand finding his shoulder as he works his hands together at her inner thigh, fingers kneading the sensitive skin of there, his left hand raises a bit, brushing the crotch of her panties so suddenly it could almost be accidental. Beth sucks in a breath, feels the heat pool wet between her legs, and Rio must feel it too, if the way he tries to hide his smirk is anything to go by. 

“And my stuff?” she asks, as much to distract herself as anything. His right hand works up, fingers kneading the lotion into the swell of her ass just below her panties, and Beth feels herself clench when he pushes his thumb up beneath the elastic. 

“What about it?” 

“What am I going to do with it between houses?” 

“I don’t know, lose it hopefully.” 

Beth squawks in outrage, opening her mouth to reply, when suddenly the hand beneath her thigh slips up, pushes the crotch of her panties aside and shoves a finger inside her. Beth gasps, balling her hand in his shirt at his shoulder, trying to drop her leg off the chair, only the hand that had been on her ass drops quickly to the back of her knee, holding her up, holding her _open_. He just laughs when she glowers down at him, fucking into her with a long finger. 

“Come on, ma, half this shit ain’t even practical. Can you even see in the top drawer of that thing?” 

He tilts his head to the dresser behind them, and Beth keens a little as he slips a second finger inside her, his thumb swiping only briefly over her clit. 

“I have a step,” she grits out, hand tightening at his shoulder, and his expression goes faux innocent. 

“Yeah? Like you in fuckin’ grade school or somethin’? You need it to reach the sink too?” 

His fingers curl suddenly, finding that spot that makes lights spark behind her eyes, and she has to grab the back of her chair with her free hand. His gaze follows her action, and he smirks again, rubbing his fingers against her g-spot in a torturously slow motion, his thumb coming back up to circle her clit in time with it. 

“These chairs too, what are they for?” 

When Beth can’t quite summon the words, he _stops_ \- stops circling, stops thrusting, and Beth blinks her eyes back open (when had she even closed them?) 

“Elizabeth.” 

When she doesn’t answer, he pulls his fingers almost entirely out of her, staying inside her just to his first knuckle. 

“Focus, mami. These chairs. What do you use ‘em for?” 

Beth glowers at him, letting go of his shirt enough to dig her nails into his shoulder through the fabric. It just makes him grin. 

“They’re reading chairs,” she says, and he hums, like he’s considering it, pushing his fingers back into her so quickly she gasps. 

“See, I seen you read a lot. I seen you read in bed, in the bath, on the sofa, even outside on the grass, but I ain’t ever seen you read on these ugly ass chairs.” 

“I haven’t seen you read on your chair either,” she bites back, thinking about the black leather chair in his bedroom, her grip tightening on the back of the chair again as he increases the pace of his thrusts, his thumb finally finding her clit again. 

“That’s because my chair ain’t a readin’ chair, ma,” he says with a laugh, and Beth blinks down at him, briefly confused, before he looks at her a little lewdly and she blushes, bright and sudden, because god, how many times has he fucked her on that chair? How many times has she ridden him on it? Even once, while horribly drunk, given him half a terrible lap dance on that stupid chair. 

“These chairs don’t even have the room for that,” he continues. “We can do this though, huh? This ain’t bad.” 

His thumb’s working harder at her clit now, and it’s only a couple more circles before he’s pushing her over the edge, her orgasm hitting her so hard she feels like she blacks out for a second. The second is apparently all Rio needs to pull his hand out and away from her, take off his belt, kick off his jeans and his underwear, yank down her panties, and pick her up, swinging her around and shoving her back into her dresser. 

Beth yelps in surprise, grabbing his shoulders and wrapping her legs around his waist, the drawer handles digging into her back, as she glowers at him. 

“Really?” 

He just smiles impishly back at her, then widens his eyes in faux innocence, hauls her up a little higher. 

“’Ey, look, you can reach the top drawer now.” 

She slaps him lightly and he just laughs again, dropping a hand down between them to grab his cock, lining it up and pushing inside her. Gasping, Beth tightens her legs around him, and god, his fingers are big and long, but they’re never quite enough to get her ready for the girth of his cock. 

He groans when she clenches around him, kissing her before dropping his head down to bite her chin dimple. She palms at his face, guiding his face down to her neck where she wants him and moaning when he starts to suck a hickey there, his thrusts growing longer and harder. 

Vaguely, she can hear the dresser shake, banging back against the wall, her picture frames and vases and boxes on the top if it shaking, then something smashing, but she finds it hard to care as he fucks her into her second orgasm, her hands clawing at his back, her heels digging into his ass. 

“You gonna come on my cock for me, baby?” he purrs into her neck, his hand finding her clit again, and she knows that means he’s close too, always wants her to come first, and today at least she’s happy to give it to him, tumbling over the edge with a cry. She clenches hard around him, feeling his hips stutter, his thrusts go harder, driving himself deeper until he comes inside her. He sinks heavily against her, pushing her further back into the dresser as her legs slip off his hips and dangle uselessly in the air either side of him. He pulls his head slightly back from her, his hands going back beneath her thighs, supporting her weight against him as he leans in to kiss her softly. 

She’s pretty sure the handles on the dresser will have left bruises on her back, but she finds it hard to care with his lip between her teeth, or at least, does until he breaks the kiss, looking sideways curiously. 

“Damn,” he says with a grin he quickly covers, and Beth follows his gaze to where one of her vases lies in broken pieces on the floor. 

“ _Rio_ ,” she cries, and he looks at her too innocently, and maybe she’d yell at him if the door didn’t suddenly creak open, Danny’s voice slipping through the crack. 

“Mommy? I heard noises.” 

“Wait outside, honey!” she yelps, suddenly scrambling, mortified, as Rio lifts her enough to slip out of her and walk her a few steps over away from the shattered vase. “Mommy broke a glass.” 

The door movement briefly stops and Beth scrambles to find her sweats from the bottom drawer of her other dresser, flailing an arm at Rio to get dressed, but he’s way ahead of her, having yanked up his underwear and his jeans in one swift motion. She’s only just covered her own ass, Rio’s come still leaking out of her and down her (thankfully covered) thighs, when Danny peaks his head in. 

“It sounded scary,” he mumbles, and Beth strides quickly over, crouching down in front of him and stroking a hand down his freckled cheek. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, honey. Me and Mr. Rio were just,” she blanches a little, feeling Rio’s amused gaze boring into the back of her skull. “Moving some furniture around,” she decides on, ignoring Rio’s bitten off bark of a laugh behind her. 

“You want me to take you back to bed?” 

Danny nods, reaching out for her hand, and Beth entwines their fingers, standing back to her full height and walking Danny back up the stairs to bed.

*

By the time she’s got Danny back to sleep and is back downstairs in her room, Rio has stripped back down to his underwear, taken off his shirt, and collected all the bits of ceramic vase into a bundle on a paper towel.

“You could probably fix it,” he tells her when she walks in, sifting through the pieces with the fingers he’d had inside her not twenty minutes before. “Bit of glue. It’s a pretty clean break.” 

“It’s fine,” Beth says, waving a hand at him and collapsing into bed. “I never really liked that one that much anyway. Plus it was a wedding present, so it’s probably a sign from the universe.” 

He hums a little at that, amused, before tying off the paper towel and walking it into the bin in her en suite. 

“You’re lucky it wasn’t the blue one,” she calls out, kicking off her sweats. “Then we really would have a problem. Hey, while you’re in there, could you get me- - ” 

She doesn’t even have a chance to finish it when Rio’s back on the bed beside her, a damp washcloth in hand like he’s read her mind. She smiles, something between exhausted and grateful, and she moves to take it off him only to have him sink between her legs, pushing her t-shirt up as he goes. He kisses a line from her belly button to her caesarean scar, and she sucks in a breath when he presses one against her cunt too, ready to push his head away – she’s not ready to go again yet, when he just sits up a little better, wiping her with the damp cloth there first, and then down the insides of her thighs. 

When he’s done, he tosses it in a perfect arch through the open en suite door, and Beth twitches a little when she hears it land heavy and wet on the bathroom floor. The twitch smooths out when he moves so his knees are either side of her hips, straddling her, his hands running up the sides of her waist, pushing her t-shirt all the way up and finally off. He comes down on all fours, resting over her like a lion, dipping his head to mouth at her through the lace cups of her bra. 

“Haven’t you had enough?” she asks, heat already pooling low again and his hand comes up to squeeze at the breast not currently being devoured by his mouth. 

“Never enough of these,” he says, swapping his mouth to her other breast, his free hand sliding underneath her to unhook her bra. “Danny okay?” 

Beth squirms a little as the hand not still groping her breast moves to her strap, pulling it slowly down her arm. 

“Yes, I don’t think he saw anything, thank god. We’ll need to be more careful about that, especially now that we’re going to be on the same floor as them.” 

She’s been increasingly glad for the staircase over the last year of doing this with Rio – usually their little feet down the stairs sounding like a warning shot. God, they must’ve been _loud_ not to have heard this time. 

“Or we could just get a lock for our door,” he says. With the strap now down, he slowly peels the cup away from her breast, purring in a guttural delight like he hasn’t seen her breasts a million times before (and hell, like he hadn’t just fucked her into next week). She rolls her eyes, but she can’t quite hide the way it makes her toes curl in her own sort of delight. How can he always be so happy to see her body? Dean had never - - _No_ , Beth thinks. She’s not allowed to do that anymore. 

“I’m not going to lock my children out,” Beth says instead, and Rio glances up at her. 

“You wanna lock’ ‘em in their rooms instead? Damn, ma, you’re ruthless.” 

Beth grabs his head with her hand, tightens it just enough to rock him from side-to-side a little in jest, and Rio grins, lowering his mouth to her revealed breast. He flicks his tongue against her nipple, then sucks until it’s standing to attention. Beth squirms beneath him. 

“Or we could just not have sex when we have all the kids in the house. Wait until mine are with Dean and Marcus is at his mom’s.” 

He lifts his head quickly at that, a look of blatant, only-half-joking horror on his face, and Beth rolls her eyes, laughing a little. 

“Or not,” she says, and he makes a vehement noise of agreement, his fingers finding her remaining bra strap and sliding it down her arm. She sighs in contentment when he finally frees her of her bra completely, his mouth grazing across her newly revealed breast, sucking a hickey into her bra line in the way he knows bugs her (it’s just that her bra irritates it enough that it’s impossible to forget the hickey’s there until it’s fully healed, a fact she’s sure is the main reason he leaves them there.) She brushes her hands on the back of his head, feeling his buzzed short hair prickle beneath her nails, and he purrs, already hardening at her hip. 

“Really?” she asks, and he pushes his nose against her breast, licking his tongue up the side in a way that makes her shiver. 

“You came twice,” he tells her. “Ain’t we equal partners? Fifty-fifty?” 

Beth rolls her eyes, but can’t quite stop her own grin, lifting a hand from his head, to spit on her palm before dropping it between them to circle her fingers around his cock. He practically purrs in approval as she starts to jerk him off, her arm at a sort of awkward angle with the way he won’t move his mouth from her breasts. 

“You really don’t like my stuff?” 

He groans a little, glancing up at her only briefly. 

“Some of it’s aight. Some of it I even like, but honestly, ma, it feels like I’ve walked into a Bed, Bath & Beyond catalogue.” 

Beth rolls her eyes, thumbing a bead of pre-come from the head of his penis, working her hand a little harder. Rio pants hotly against her breast. 

“Well I’d rather a Bed, Bath and Beyond catalogue than a - -” she fumbles a little, “spread for a Bachelor Pad in _Rich Jerk Weekly_.” 

He laughs in surprise, before biting her breast hard enough to make her jump and yelp. She tightens her grip on his cock in retaliation, relishing in the way that he moans.

“Like those weird little vases you have, the white, twisty ones? They’re so pretentious.” 

It takes him a minute to reply – long enough that Beth thinks smugly that he’s conceded, when suddenly he lifts his mouth from her breast long enough to say:

“They’re originals. One of a kind.” 

“Thankfully,” she says a little too sweetly, and Rio leans back to look at her, a furious grin on his face. He pulls her fingers off his cock, and Beth’s about to add that she’s glad they’d already started this thing between them, because she’d never have slept with him if she’d known he was such a snob, when he flips her roughly over, yanking her up onto her hands and knees, grabbing her hips to keep her in place, and pushes into her in one long, hard thrust. Beth’s fingers immediately clench in the sheets and god, she’s glad she’s already pretty stretched out from before. He thrusts a few times before pulling almost the whole way out and then thrusting himself roughly into her, so deep she can feel his hip bones at the top of her ass. 

Beth cries out, gasping, almost falling forwards onto the bed at the strength of it, when his hand comes up beneath her, clutching at her breast to keep her up. After that, it’s erratic, his hips slamming into her as he fucks her, his hand squeezing her breast beneath her, his other one only leaving her hip to find her clit, rubbing it furiously, and god, she could almost cry, she’s still so raw, but he pushes her blissfully, unfairly over the edge too soon, fucks her through her cries, through her orgasm, let’s her go until she’s face first and limp in the pillows, and it takes him another few minutes to finally finish, pulling out in time to come on her ass and her back. 

He flops sated down on the beside her, and Beth twists her neck enough in the pillows to look at him. 

“I owe you an orgasm still then,” she says, rubbing at her face against the pillow and stopping herself from rolling over lest she make the bed any dirtier. She’ll shower again soon, she thinks, just - - she needs a minute. Rio hums thoughtfully beside her, scratching his belly with blunt nails. 

“I’ll add it to your tab, yeah?” 

Beth snorts a little, going to bury her face in the pillow again when a thought suddenly occurs to her. 

“What about the bed?” 

Rio twists to look at her, an eyebrow raised in confusion. 

“What about it?” 

“We don’t need two of them,” she says. “One of us needs to get rid of theirs.” 

Rio nods, like he’d already thought about it, and of course he had, Beth thinks, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. 

“We’re takin’ mine.” 

“What? Why?” 

Beth pushes herself up a little better, forehead furrowed, ignoring the ache in her - - in her everything. Rio looks briefly confused by her confusion, before he smooths out his expression, his hand coming up to gesture vaguely around them. 

“Yeah, see the novelty of fuckin’ you in your husband’s bed was fun for a while, but I ain’t bringin’ that shit with us.” 

And that - - that makes sense, Beth thinks, something oddly pleased unfurling in her gut at the fact that he’s clearly thought about making sure they leave Dean behind them, but - - she frowns. 

“Well, I don’t want your bed either then.” 

“Why not?” 

She sits up, ignoring the fact that she’s ruined her efforts not to dirty their bed by planting her ass on the sheets, but still. Sitting up for this feels right, looking down at him right now feels right. 

“How many girls have you stuck your penis in on that bed?” 

He looks instantly amused by her word choice (figures), and opens his mouth to reply, but seems to think better of it, opting instead to slowly close it and nod in concession. 

“Fair,” he replies after a minute, pushing his hands back behind his head. “So, we need a new bed.” 

“We need a new bed,” Beth moans, collapsing back down into the pillows. 

Just another thing for the list.

*

“And this is the master bedroom,” Beth says, stepping through the door, holding her hands out awkwardly either side of her in a pale imitation of Lisa’s practiced grace. It takes a moment for Annie and Ruby to follow, a far cry from the way Annie had forced her way beneath Beth’s arm to get through the front door, darting room to room and joyously getting her bearings (“Oh my god, I think I can actually, like, _smell_ the lack of Deansy.”)

It’s only a visit – the house isn’t officially theirs yet, not until the end of that thirty-day window, but Lisa had happily passed over the keys for a few hours for Beth to take family through it, and Annie and Ruby had leapt at the chance.

It feels even bigger now that the display furniture is out of it, the walls echoing slightly with their steps and their voices, but it’s easy to ignore it for the chatter of birds outside, the distant sounds of children playing. She’s still so stressed with the move, still left with so much to _do_ , but at least coming here still feels so good. 

Feels _right_. 

“You guys boned in here yet?” Annie asks, glancing around the room and poking her head into the en suite, and Beth blushes, bright and pink. 

“It’s not even ours yet, Annie.” 

“That’s not a no.” 

“ _No_ ,” Beth punctuates, and Annie sniffs, says something that distinctly sounds like _well, you’re boring_ under her breath as she goes to look out the window over the yard. Beth rolls her eyes a little, her gaze softening when she finds Ruby, who’s looking around still, taking everything in. 

“You like it?” she asks, walking over to her side. 

“It’s beautiful,” Ruby says. “It’s very you.” 

“It feels me.” 

And she’s surprised by how much she means it, how honest the words feel, and god, she’s not sure she’s ever felt like that before. The contentment in her swallows up so much of the doubt. 

“Can’t say it’s easy picturing him here.” 

And that’s - - Beth blinks, her lips twisting. The doubt backwashing the contentment so fast she can taste it behind her teeth, his words the first time they’d been here echoing in her head again. _It’s all just flippin’ a game._ Beth clears her throat, her hand touching her neck in an anxious gesture she’s sure Ruby clocks. 

“It gets easier to,” Beth says, and god, she hopes it will, at least. Ruby looks at her, and for a second, she thinks she’s going to pry, to tell her what she told her back in her living room that day. To tell her that she and Rio need to define what they are, but then she just sighs, shakes her head slightly, and gives Beth a small grin. 

“When are you telling the kids?” 

“Tomorrow afternoon. I’m going to tell them after school, and then Rio and Marcus are coming over for dinner so we can talk about it together, and then bring them all to see the house next week before they go to their dad’s and Marcus to his mom’s.”

Before she has to get out of her current house. Beth almost groans at the prospect. 

“Good plan,” Ruby says genuinely now, and then, slower, “Sooo, does that mean you’re telling Dean soon?” 

Beth _does_ groan then, catching Annie’s attention. 

“What are we talking about?” 

“Telling Deansy.” 

The sheer, unadulterated delight on Annie’s face makes Beth roll her eyes. 

“Oh my god, can I be there for it? I’ll bring snacks! And like, a bottle of hard liquor for you. You can either drink it, or Boomer-him if he’s a total ass. What am I talking about? You can totally do both.” 

Beth snorts, shaking her head, she walks past Annie and Ruby, back out into the hallway as she starts towards the stairs.

“Maybe I could just not tell him?” she tries, tossing the words over her shoulder when she hears Annie and Ruby on her heels. “It’s not like he just pops by anymore really now that he’s in South Haven. Plus he doesn’t have this address.” 

“You gotta tell him, B,” Ruby says, picking up her pace to be in step with Beth. “And after tomorrow, you’re gonna want to tell him before the kids do.”

*

She’s halfway through cooking dinner when Rio springs into her kitchen through the back door, Marcus babbling on his heels, the first sigh of evening light chasing them through. Rio makes quick work helping Marcus out of his shoes and jacket, and Beth only half sees him as she pulls the pot off the stove, the fan above it loud in her ears. She jerks her head back a little at the steam, before calling over to Marcus:

“Hi, honey, the rest of the kids are watching _Nemo_ if you want to join them?” 

“Thanks, Miss Beth,” he chimes, poking his head around the kitchen counter, giving her a million-watt grin as he darts away from his father and makes quick work of navigating her house and finding the others. She winces at Jane’s high-pitched squeal of delight when she must see him. 

Holding the pot over the sink, she upends the pasta and boiling water into the colander, so distracted in her task she doesn’t notice Rio sneak up behind her until he’s pinching a forkful of homemade pumpkin, feta and pine nut ravioli and dropping a thin, dogeared catalogue on the bench beside her. 

“It’s hot,” she says, but Rio eats it whole anyway, making a pleased sound in the back of his throat at the taste. Stepping around her, he goes to dip his finger in the sauce still on the stove too, and Beth smacks his hand away with her spoon. “You’re worse than the children.” 

He shrugs, sliding around the kitchen island to plant himself on a stool, pulling off his jacket to reveal a simple black t-shirt beneath it. He looks good, but he always looks good, and Beth resists the urge to catch a glimpse of her own reflection in the kitchen window. She knows she looks frazzled, in her purple hoody and jeans, a ‘Mom of the Year’ apron over the top, her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. She’d spent most of the morning with Rio at the dealership before darting across town to pick up packing boxes from someone Annie knew through Fine & Frugal (ignoring Rio’s annoyed sigh as she’d darted out the door – he’d offered her a guy he knew – someone who he said made efficient work of packing for him, would do Beth’s house in a pinch, but Beth had refused. Packing was a good time to cull after all), darting back to pick up some of the paperwork for the house from Lisa’s office, then back to get the kids up from school, take Kenny to Krav Maga and Emma to ballet, before getting them all home, washed and ready to eat. Somehow in there she’d squeezed in telling them, and they’d been shockingly unfazed by the news, but then - - then she thinks maybe they’re used to Rio here most nights anyway. 

She walks over to the oven, burning her fingers pulling out the loaves of (not homemade – she hadn’t had the energy in the end) garlic bread and dropping them onto the cooling rack. 

“What’s that?” she asks, gesturing to the catalogue, and Rio leans back in his seat, taking her in. 

“Beds,” he says, then squints a little at her. “I picked out a few. You okay, ma? 

She nods, pulling her apron off and slinging it over the kitchen island. 

“Oh, yeah,” she gestures vaguely. “Just a lot of running around. You finish up okay?”

“No issues. Demon’s gettin’ a bigger cut this month, just so you know. It’ll come out o’ my fifty. He’s picked up a few jobs for me.” 

Beth blinks, surprised, but grabs the paperwork she’d picked up from Lisa, passing it to Rio who instantly starts to read it.

“Everything okay?” she tries, and Rio nods, eyes scanning the document, and Beth moves back to the stove top, stirring the sauce briefly before finding herself a little listless, Rio too involved with the paperwork to talk. She picks up the catalogue he’d brought with him, flipping through to the pages he’d dogeared and finding the beds that he’d put a small black mark beside. 

The first one really is lovely, and Beth shifts her weight, pleased. It’s a simple, elegant walnut frame, with a modest headboard and a polished finish. Maybe this won’t be so hard after all, Beth thinks, warming up to the thought of a new bed. Leaving behind their former bed-sharers had felt like _something_ too, the way he hadn’t wanted Dean there, the way he had conceded to her not wanting to bring - - _whoever_ with them too. 

The smile falls quickly from her face when she sees the price.

“ _Rio_ ,” she hisses, dropping the catalogue and Rio looks warily at her over the papers in his hand. “This bed is almost $10,000.” 

He hums, concurring, before adding, “One of them’s only 8.” 

“Oh, great,” she scoffs, flipping angrily through the pages, seeing bed after bed after bed, and becoming suddenly annoyed that the pages aren’t glossy and thin like a regular catalogue, but thick, matte, _artisanal_. “That only makes it about twice the price of the combined contents of my current bedroom. And oh, look, that price doesn’t even include the mattress.” 

“You want to talk about this now, or after we talk to the kids?” he asks, turning to the next page of the paperwork from Lisa, and Beth bristles, throwing the catalogue back down on the kitchen island and stalking over to one of the cabinets. She pulls out one of her deep serving bowls, pouring in the ravioli and then the sauce, mixing it a little too aggressively, before grabbing the block of parmesan from the fridge, grating it over the top.

She hasn’t even set the table yet, or gotten anyone their drinks, and she thinks the bottom of the garlic bread might be slightly singed, and she thinks tonight might be its own sort of test, and - - 

There’s the sting.

“ _Dammit_ ,” she hisses, dropping the cheese and the hand grater, blood flicking across both. 

Rio’s beside her in an instant, taking her over to the tap to wash the dust of the cheese filings off her hand before grabbing a tea towel from the drawer, dampening it just slightly and pressing it to her sliced finger. 

“Keep the pressure, yeah?” he tells her, and Beth nods, feeling tears prickle at the corners of her eyes, and quickly trying to blink them away. 

“You need to pick your battles, mami,” he tells her. “It’s just a bed. These were just some to look at. It don’t matter.” 

“It _does_ ,” she insists, her voice thick, and Rio looks at her, takes in her expression. 

“Okay, it does matter,” he replies gently. “Tell me why it does.” 

Beth looks away from him, toes curling beneath her, and she just thinks - - she thinks that he doesn’t like her things, she thinks of the way Ruby had said it wasn’t easy to see him in that house, she thinks of what _he’d_ said, for the millionth time, that this is just _flipping another game_ , and she’s just - - she’s tired, and she’s stressed, and she still doesn’t know what it is that they’re _doing_. 

“Elizabeth,” he says, and he sounds exhausted, and Beth pulls the tea towel away to check on her finger. 

“Can you get me a bandaid please?” she asks, her voice small and as firm as she can manage it. “And some antiseptic cream?” 

Rio exhales a little sharply, says something that almost sounds like _okay_ , but steps back, heading towards the bathroom, and as soon as he’s out of sight, Beth chokes on a sob, before she steels herself again. It’s fine, she promises herself, swiping at her face with her good hand. She’s all good.

*

“So does this mean you’re married?” Emma asks, tilting her head, pasta sauce on her chin, and Beth laughs, feeling Rio tighten a bit beside her.

“No, baby. Me and Mr Rio are - - ” she blinks, opens her mouth a few times. “We are just really, really good frie- -” 

“We’re partners,” Rio interjects, his tone light and soft. “Like, you know when you got a real good thing goin’ with someone in your ballet class? And you like dancin’ together all the time? And you like havin’ ‘em over, and sharin’ your lunch with ‘em?” 

Emma nods with way too much enthusiasm, and Beth squints a little, wondering if her and Rio have made a habit of talking about ballet and partners. 

“Well, me and your mom are like that.” 

“You dance together?” Danny asks from his seat beside Jane, uncertain, and Rio laughs. 

“Yeah, a sort of grown up dance.” 

Beth glares at him across the table, and Rio shrugs, grinning back at her as he pops a forkful of ravioli into his mouth. 

“I thought she was your girlfriend?” Marcus asks suddenly, confused, and Beth’s jaw drops. 

She looks quickly across the table at Rio again, her eyes wide and she’s sure the colour has drained from her face, but Rio, shockingly, just laughs again, affection thick in his tone. 

“It’s all the same thing, pop. Some people just like to call it different.” 

Marcus gives his father a sceptical look, before giving Beth a considering one, and she’s seen it on Rio’s face so many times, she feels a little bit woozy. Beth tries to smile at him, open her mouth to say what, she has no idea, when her gaze catches on Kenny, his own stare directed hard down at his plate, and god, okay. She balls her hands at her thighs, trying to think of something to add, when suddenly Jane sits up a little taller in her seat, lifting her chin. 

“I have a girlfriend.” 

“Yeah?” Rio asks, without skipping a beat, grabbing a second helping of ravioli. “Who’s she?” 

“Polly. She likes numbers, hip- hippo- hippopopy - - _hippos_ , and the colour yellow. She’s in my class at school.” 

She leans over in her seat towards Rio, whispering conspiratorially. 

“She holds my hand.” 

“Damn,” Rio whistles. “You gonna move in with her too?” 

Jane looks briefly scandalised. 

“Mr. Rio, I am only six.” 

It’s enough to make Rio laugh all over again, pulling himself together enough to give Jane a look that says _fair enough_ , and Beth can’t quite fight the grin, even if she’s still reeling at Rio having apparently told Marcus she’s _his girlfriend_ , when Kenny suddenly shoves back his chair,

“May I be excused?” he asks, still avoiding Beth’s look, and Rio sits back in his chair, his own gaze finding Beth. Beth blinks, lets out a soft, unhappy little breath, but gathers herself quickly.

“Of course,” she says, and Kenny starts to clear his plate, and she just - - she doesn’t want him to go like this - - “Can I be excused with you?” 

Kenny looks up at her then, surprised, his big eyes bright and blue, and he nods suddenly, sharply, and Beth gets to her feet too and follows him. They clear their plates in the kitchen, rinsing them and stacking them by the sink, before Kenny heads for the back door, opening it and walking outside. Beth follows him, pulling her hoodie a little tighter around herself to ward off the chill, and is half expecting to have to follow him right to the end of the backyard, but he stops at the patio steps, dropping down to sit on the top one. 

Beth sits down beside him. 

The night is thick with chatter – with somebody having an outdoor party a few houses down, the smell of steaks sizzling on a barbeque filling the spring air, the sound of a champagne cork popping, then people – laughing, a couple cheering. Beth drinks it all in. Finds it easier in the moment to think about than anything to do with Rio or the new life that’s nipping on her heels. 

“I’m sorry,” Kenny says. “I didn’t want to be rude. I like him a lot. He’s really nice, and he’s funny, and he helps me with my homework and - - and I like that he makes you laugh a lot.” 

“You weren’t rude,” Beth replies, and then adds: “I’m glad that you like him.” 

Kenny’s smile is small and shy and a little sad, before he diverts his gaze again. The patio light catches his hair, casting shadows down his pale, moonish face, making his eyes a bright, watery blue. 

“I just feel weird,” he mumbles, and Beth’s heart clenches in her chest. She keeps her voice soft when she speaks. 

“That’s okay. You’re allowed to feel weird.” 

Kenny nods, bringing his legs up to his chest and hugging them in tight. He gives Beth a careful look, but it takes him a minute to speak. 

“Does this mean you and dad are never getting back together?” 

Beth blinks, surprised. 

“Honey, we’re divorced, remember?” 

“Yeah, but you got back together before. And you were happy! Remember when dad made you that crafting table?” 

“I remember,” Beth says. “But it’s - - I’m - -” 

She fumbles for the words, exhausted by the day, by the year, by the last three years, and so says nothing for a while, and Kenny just watches her. 

“You know,” she says. “I was only three years older than you are now when me and your dad got together.”

Kenny blinks, reeling back a little in surprise. 

“Yep,” Beth says. “A _long_ time ago. And me and your dad, we loved each other a lot for a really, really long time. Loved each other so much we made the four of you.” Kenny wrinkles his nose a bit at that, but he’s grinning, and Beth grins back. “And you know, sometimes love is like a,” she fumbles a little for the words. “A magical jacket. Like it fits you _perfectly_ , and the seams never show and the colour never fades and you can wear it with your ugliest pyjamas or your nicest, most favourite suit, and it just always looks and feels good.” 

Kenny giggles, and Beth grins at him, scooting a little closer to him on the step. 

“That? That is the sort of love your Aunt Ruby and Uncle Stan have. Your dad’s and mine? It wasn’t that. Ours was just a sweater, and it looked really good for a little while, but it got tired, and it got all stretched out, and it got holes in it, and then it ripped, and we tried to - - to knit it back together, but it never really looked the same again, or fit right again. So we needed to let it go.” 

Kenny looks at her, and he suddenly just looks - - looks so _sad_ , but also like he understands. 

“Do you know what you and Rio are yet?” he asks, and Beth rubs her hands on the thighs of her jeans, wills some warmth into her hands. 

“No,” she admits. “But it feels special.” 

Kenny nods, seemingly satisfied with her answer and then, he blinks, hard, nervously. 

“What about me?” 

“What?” 

“Am I a sweater too?” 

Beth jerks back, turning on the step to look at him, his wide-eyed gaze fixed so, so anxiously on her, and suddenly there are tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. 

“ _No_ ,” she says vehemently. “Never. You, and your brother and sisters, you are the most sparkly, magical jacket of all. You are the,” and she laughs a little at herself, and she looks at his glassy eyes and just - - oh. 

“How I feel about your father is not how I feel about you, okay? You are - - ” and her voice hitches. “You are the most important thing in my closet.” 

Kenny sniffs then, a fat tear rolling down his cheek, and Beth pulls him into her lap, clutching him so tightly to her chest she’s vaguely unsure he can breathe properly, but he doesn’t seem to care, clinging back to her harder than he’s done in years. 

“You’re my favourite jacket too, mom,” he whispers, and Beth presses kisses into his hair.

*

She’s not sure how long they’re out there for, but it’s long enough for Kenny to fall asleep against her shoulder, his dozing breaths musing her hair, and she’d probably stay out all night if the backdoor didn’t crack open, disturbing her own half-asleep thoughts.

Beth cups Kenny’s head so as not to disturb him as she turns around to be met with Rio by the backdoor, the patio light catching his form, making him somehow, impossibly longer and leaner. Darker almost, his features so shadowed she can barely make them out. 

“I put the rest of the kids to bed,” he says. “Marcus is asleep on the couch,” and Beth glances at him gratefully, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Kenny, his face drawn. 

“He okay?” 

“Yeah, I think so,” and then she looks at the way Rio’s jaw rocks, and adds, “He likes you.” 

And the way his head moves in visible surprise lets the light catch him better, lets her see his eyes. God, she loves his eyes. 

“This was about me, not about you,” she says. “I think we sorted it out, or at least started to.” 

“He get mad at you?” 

“No. He just - -” and it’s hard for her to say it, to say it to _Rio_ , but in the end she does. “He thought how I felt about Dean was the same as how I felt about him. I think he thought me choosing you was rejecting him.” 

Rio hums a little, jaw working, and Beth sighs, running her hands through Kenny’s hair. She tugs on it lightly. 

“Hey, mister, think you can save your mom’s back and head to bed yourself?” 

Kenny yawns awake, nodding, clambering to his feet. He looks a little shyly, a little embarrassed as he walks past Rio, but says a small good night that Rio returns. They watch him head to bed and Rio makes quick work of striding towards her, deliberately dropping to sit on the other side of her to Kenny on the step. 

“Didn’t go too bad,” he offers, and Beth nods in agreement, glancing over at him. 

“Did you tell Marcus I was your girlfriend?” 

Rio huffs out a short, almost laugh, dropping his head a little and shaking it, his gaze on his hands, like he’d known this was coming.

“You preferred I tell him you were somethin’ else? Really, really good friends maybe?” 

Beth blushes, but owns it, giving him a half grin when he briefly looks at her, which Rio only snorts at, returning his gaze to his hands.

“I’m just surprised, I guess,” Beth says, and Rio looks at her properly then, his hands draped over his knees, his expression strangely relaxed.

“You want to be somethin’ else?” 

Beth looks across the yard, grinning a little to herself. She shakes her head. 

“No,” she says, and hides her smile at the same time that Rio hides his. “You should know though that I have not been somebody’s girlfriend in over twenty years. I might not be the best candidate for the job.” 

He laughs at that, the sound almost musical in the dark. 

“What do you think this is, _The Bachelorette_? You fill out an application form? Go around Detroit in a hot air balloon?” 

Beth rolls her eyes, but can’t quite stop the smile. 

“You watch _one_ episode with me, and you think you know everything about the show.”

“Baby, it was the longest hour of my life, and I’ve been on week-long stakeouts.” 

“Whatever,” Beth sniffs, turning back to look at him, and he just looks right back at her. 

“Hi,” she says. “I didn’t say it to you when you got here tonight. So, hi.” 

And Rio blinks at her then, surprised, before his gaze softens. 

“Hi.” 

And there’s so much she wants to say to him, to ask him, but the words collide on her tongue, take each other out – a fight to the death of thoughts and sentiments and too many feelings, and Beth doesn’t have the energy to pull up a single one. 

“Will you take me to bed?” she asks instead, and he doesn’t reply, not in words, just brushes her hair off her face and leans in to kiss her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahahaha, this somehow endeed up SO. LONG. Anyway, I hope you like it. <3 There's lot of fighting and making up in the next chapter as they actually, y'know, move.
> 
> [PS This is loosely what the house they move on is based on!](https://www.landisconstruction.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/4015-DresdencroppedforWebsite.jpg)  
> 
> 
> Title come from the She & Him song, 'Home'.
> 
> Series title comes from a Charlotte Perkins Gilman quote "The home is the center and circumference, the start and the finish, of most of our lives."


	2. Chapter 2

Lifting her ass off the chair in Rio’s office, Beth wriggles her cell phone one-handed out of the back pocket of her jeans. She’s still chewing on her lunch as she plants herself back down and opens up the Pinterest app, scrolling with her thumb until she lands on the jungle-printed wallpaper she’d saved the night before, holding it out across the desk towards Rio.

“So, this is what I’m thinking for Danny’s room,” she says, and when he doesn’t take her phone immediately, she waves it a little at him, coaxing.

She’s not sure if this has surprised him over the last few days – not sure if she’s able to truly surprise him anymore (honestly though, he seems to think she’s capable of anything these days, which he uses to praise her or make fun of her, depending on his mood) – but since they’d told the kids the other night, Beth has slipped down a rabbit hole of _decorating_. Between packing and organising and researching the schools in their new district, to say nothing of _work_ , she’s made a habit of collecting catalogues and ducking into outlet stores and scrolling through the sale sections of the Target and Cloud 9 websites, fitting their new home together in her head.

And maybe it hasn’t surprised him, but the urgency with which Beth has felt the need for it has certainly surprised _her_.

Because it wasn’t really in the _telling_ of the kids exactly, not in the way Kenny had reacted, or the way Rio had called her his - - and god, she can still barely say it without turning eight shades of red - - his _girlfriend_. It was in the next day. It was in taking the kids to show them the house.

Because the thing is, they’d been _shy_.

Gone was the confidence of the dinner table, the chatter and the seeming complete indifference to where they lived and who they lived with. They’d walked up their new front steps to the big empty house, and Danny had latched himself onto her leg as Jane had torn up the hallway. Emma moving so slowly she’d often seemed to barely be moving at all, her eyes wide and her lips parted, taking in every curve of ceiling and every vacant room with a tentativeness that Beth had never seen in her before.

It had been enough to make Beth search out Rio, but he’d been chatting too easily to Kenny, Marcus giggling over his shoulder as he’d given them their own personal tour of the place.

And just - - it’s the first time they’ve done this, she’d reminded herself, trying to coax Danny off her leg by walking him to the new family room and showing him where they’d keep his boardgames. The first time their idea of home has been forced to change, because even staying with Dean still just feels like visiting grandma, at least it will until the summer break when they stay with him at the lake house in South Haven, and Beth doesn’t know how she could’ve overlooked this, couldn’t have better prepared them for it, the guilt growing like a weed in her gut.

But she could fix it, she’d thought then, still thinks _now_. She could make it feel like home. Make it feel more like home than even their old one. She could do that for them.

“I’m thinking like, a dinosaur theme,” she says now, when Rio finally drops his wrap, wiping his hands on a napkin before grabbing her phone from her grip. “We can use this wallpaper as a feature, and then paint the rest of the walls green. I found these lamps at that outlet off Seventh Street the other day too where they have these cut-outs of like a - - what do you call them? The dinosaurs with like the - -” Beth gestures to the back of her head. “Like the bone there? It kind of looks like they’re wearing sad party hats? Para-something? Cut-outs of those guys anyway, and the lamp is on a little motor so it looks like the dinosaurs are moving around when you turn it on.”

She’s still building the room in her head – the duvet cover she’d found online, the rug that Ruby had emailed her – when she looks up to see Rio, his eyes still on her phone, his forehead furrowed and his lips parted as he shakes his head back at it. She squints at the expression, sitting up a little straighter.

“What?”

“Themes are for birthday parties, they ain’t for bedrooms,” he says, sliding her phone back across the desk towards her, and Beth blinks, half-scoffing, half-laughing.

“Themes are for - -” she flails a little, trying to think of a time themes don’t make things better, and finds she can’t think of one, so she settles on: “Everything.”

He arches an eyebrow at her at that, picking the wrap up off his plate again, adjusting the paper down and taking an enormous bite before he even graces her with a response. She’d grabbed the wraps for lunch for them from the deli he pretends he isn’t obsessed with on her way over from the dealership. The deli some tiny hole in the wall that Rio had taken her to for the first-time months ago when she’d been complaining about how hard it was to find rosewater in the suburbs for the Turkish Delight cake she wanted to make. Even she had left the place utterly delighted, with about eighty dollars-worth of cheese and cured meats for girls’ night, plus a wide range of baking treats to really pep up her kitchen cupboard, while Rio had hovered over the take-away cabinet, almost purring over their gourmet lunches.

Needless to say, they’ve been back a bit.

“Yeah? You wanna be stripin’ wallpaper for every new phase?” he says after he’s finished chewing. “What happens when he likes space instead o’ dinosaurs? When Emma likes horses more than ballet?”

“She already likes horses more than ballet,” she tells him, rolling her eyes, but neglects to mention the [unicorn cushions](https://www.adairs.com.au/adairs-kids/home-gifts/cushions/adairs-kids/cushions-co-ordinate-range--white/) she’s already bought for Emma’s room. “Besides, I seem to recall an awful lot of robots in Marcus’ room.”

“Yeah, figurines and shit,” Rio insists. “Which can go to his cousins or Goodwill when he’s done with ‘em. You think your sister’s kid’s gonna want a box o’ his lil’ cousin’s stripped wallpaper? You think any thrift store will? You’re spendin’ too much money on shit with an expiration date.”

Beth rolls her eyes, pulling the artichoke hearts out of her wrap (she really does hate them) and Rio holds his hand out expectantly, waiting for Beth to drop them to his palm. She does, and Rio makes a far-too-pleased sound as he pushes them down into his own wrap, down around the arugula, Spanish onion and the chorizo, his fingers coming out of it wet with aioli, and her face bursts into flames when he sucks them into his mouth, too focused on his lunch to notice her reaction. Willing the red out of her face, and the sinking heat in her back _up_ , Beth clears her throat, distracting herself by asking:

“What do you want to do with their rooms then?”

Rio just shrugs.

“Keep it simple.”

It’s enough to make her snort, dropping her own wrap to gesture around his office with both hands.

“Oh, like this?”

And okay, so that’s not exactly fair. It’s not like his apartment isn’t incredibly nice, and he’d told her when he moved into this office that it was only for a couple of months (she’d discovered that his tendency to pick up and leave had extended to his offices, something that probably shouldn’t have surprised her as much as it had), and that he was here so little that there wasn’t much point in setting it up beyond his basic needs – a (very nice) desk, a couple of chairs, a powerboard, a low-slung bookshelf housing thick binders and a few archival boxes. The only real décor touch is the peace lily beside his desk which Beth had laughed at the irony of the first time she’d seen it.

Rio just replies with a look, finishing off his lunch in two more bites. His silence makes her shift a little in her seat, bite the inside of her cheek, her ears pricking instead at the sound of the warehouse outside – the steady flow of people, the whirring of the clothes dryers, the slicing of the counterfeit cash. Vaguely, she can hear footsteps, but thinks little of it.

“Hey, so, speaking of the kids,” she starts, and Rio eyes her warily, picking up the note of uncertainty in her tone, and god, she’s not sure why she _is_. She’s been thinking about this since they took the kids to the house after all. “I think maybe - - ”

She’s interrupted by a knock on the door, spinning in her seat to look as Rio scrunches up the paper from his lunch and tosses it into the trash can by the bookshelf. The lack of response from either of them is enough for the door to open, and Demon to stand in the doorway. A look of slight surprise passes his face at seeing Beth there, and that’s enough to make Beth eye him more carefully. It’s not like Demon doesn’t know about them, hasn’t even made it pretty clear that he likes her as much as she’s surprised to have found that she likes him, that he approves, which can only mean he’s bringing news he knows Beth won’t like.

His gaze finds Rio’s over Beth’s head, and she follows it back to see Rio tilt his chin up, telling him to _go ahead_.

“Cal’s booked,” Demon tells him after a split-second hesitation, and Rio nods, seemingly pleased, and dismisses Demon with a flick of his wrist, leaving Rio and Beth alone again.

The door has barely clicked shut when Beth turns her full attention back on Rio, squinting a little at him as he grabs his phone out of his jacket pocket and works his thumbs across the screen, typing out a text or an email. When he doesn’t choose to fill her in ( _shocking_ ), Beth bites her tongue and asks:

“Who’s Cal?”

“Contractor,” Rio says, not even looking up at her, and Beth huffs out an annoyed breath.

“What’s he been contracted for?”

“Security,” he tells her, and that’s enough to make Beth frown, remembering the bruises on his knuckles when he’d come over to hers those few weeks ago, when they’d talked about money, before they’d found their house – that guarded, guarding look he’d had in his eye, the way he’d held himself. Something in her chest tightens.

“Is everything okay?” she asks, careful to keep the worry out of her voice, but she thinks he must hear it anyway with the way he looks up at her, his face deliberately relaxed in a way she knows he intends to put her at ease. He nods.

“It ain’t nothin’ you gotta worry about, yeah? Just precautionary.”

Beth bites the inside of her cheek, not quite happy with the answer, before she leans back in her seat, folding her arms across her chest, the last of her lunch forgotten.

“The kids,” she starts again, hoping the distraction might be enough to loosen her up, and Rio grins, amused at her transition. “I think we should spend some time with each other’s. Alone.”

It’s been on her mind even more than decorating the house has been – the seed planted by Kenny’s own uncertainty and then sprouted the next day at the house. Her own kids’ tentativeness had been hard, but she’d found herself tentative too at Marcus’ seeming confidence and independence – used to being uprooted with his father, she supposes, and the feeling that _that_ unlocks in her feels best ignored for now – and then at how quickly he’d let her own kids overwhelm him. Beth had promptly realised that she didn’t know enough about Marcus to know if he’d needed rescuing from Jane’s boundless energy or encouragement to meet it – something that hadn’t been helped when Rio had spent the better part of half an hour on a tersely voiced phone call in the yard.

“What do you have in mind?” Rio asks, dropping his phone to the desk and leaning back in his seat, crossing his arms and mirroring her pose.

“I have to be out of my house on Saturday,” Beth says, and god, it’s Wednesday now, and there’s still so much to - - _no_ , not the time. “And Dean’s picking the kids up for the two weeks on Friday afternoon, before they come back to m - - _us_ at the new place. I was thinking maybe tomorrow you could take them to the movies? So they can get a bit more familiar with you before they’re living with you.”

It had been the thing that had made the most sense to her. The thought of inflicting the four of them on Rio alone without strict parameters and at least two of them docile feeling a little too cruel for somebody with only one, perfectly behaved kid.

“The movies?” Rio replies, wrinkling his nose slightly, and Beth blinks, forehead furrowing in confusion.

“What’s that face for?”

“Don’t they spend enough time in front o’ screens?”

And both her eyebrows shoot up at that, something defensive growing in her belly, because that almost sounds like a _parenting criticism_ , and she lets her eyes drift across Rio’s face, checking for a joke there, and when she finds none, casts her eyes down to his phone, lighting up on his desk, and then his laptop. He smirks a little at that, shrugging as if to say _touché_.

“Would you prefer something else?” she asks, her tone dry.

“I’ll think o’ somethin’. Pick ‘em up around three?”

And whatever she’d been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that. She blinks, her irritation dissipating as she finds herself nodding.

“That sounds good.”

“Cool.”

“And Marcus?”

“He ain’t goin’ to his mom’s until Sunday,” Rio says, and right, Beth thinks, sitting up a little straighter. They hadn’t talked about this – about the fact that Beth is staying at his in the week-long interim between handing her keys over to the new owners, and her and Rio picking up their new ones. And of course Marcus could’ve been there too, it just - - hadn’t occurred to her.

“I got some business Sunday mornin’ anyway, and Marcus’ mom ain’t pickin’ him up ‘til two,” he says, and Beth grins, sitting up a little straighter.

“Sunday morning,” she echoes, and Rio meets her grin.

*

Beth’s still pulling down the last of her framed flower prints from the foyer wall to wrap and pack when Annie suddenly hollers from the (mostly) packed up living room.

Dipping around the dividing wall to check on her, Beth rolls her eyes when she finds Annie loudly fake-crying as she clutches the twin-pack of [naposaurus pillowcases](https://www.adairs.com.au/adairs-kids/bedroom/pillowcases/adairs-kids/naposaurus-decorative-text-pillowcase/) Beth had bought earlier that day to her  
chest, yelling: “ _It’s too cute_ ,” at the top of her lungs.

“Put them back, Annie,” she says, her tone firm even if she is unable to quite keep the amusement off her face at Annie’s dramatic reaction to children’s bedding. “I don’t want Danny to see it before we move.”

Annie follows the instruction, but not without rifling through the rest of the bag, finding the matching sheet set and the box with the [origami-styled t-rex lamp](https://www.adairs.com.au/adairs-kids/home-gifts/all/night-light-collection--6), and starting to loudly fake sob all over again. It’s enough for Beth to throw her hands up in surrender, moving back out to the foyer to finish packing on her own.

She figures the sooner she’s packed up this room, the better. Walking through these doors the last few days has only seemed to remind her of everything there is left still to do, and at least with it packed and ready for Saturday, she might actually feel like she’s seeing the fruits of her labour. Rolling her aching shoulders back, she sighs, resisting the urge to massage her stiff neck, not for the first time today wishing Rio was there to press his broad fingers to the knots and undo her.

“Man, Ben was never cute enough for this stuff, it’s not fair,” Annie pouts, finding her way back into the foyer beside Beth and collapsing onto the little bench there. She grabs her plastic cup of vermouth, sucking the straw into her mouth, and grimacing a little at the taste. “He’s always had like, Cary Grant-style, and old man taste. Too classy, that kid.”

“I don’t know,” Beth replies easily. “His bow ties are pretty cute.”

“Well, that’s true. Maybe all of his cuteness just compounded to his face and fashion so there wasn’t enough left over for the rest of his taste?”

Beth laughs, rolling her eyes as she grabs the roll of paper tape, tearing a strip off to cross over the glass of the frame (it really is the best way to make sure it doesn’t break in the move after all).

“Since the kids all have their own rooms, I’m theming them,” Beth says as she does it, grinning a little to herself at the thought. She can’t wait to see their little faces when they see what she’s done. _Themes are for birthday parties,_ Beth scoffs internally. Rio doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“Oooo, amazing. Okay, can I guess?”

Beth nods, wrapping the newly taped frame in bubble wrap and slipping it into the box before starting with the next one. Annie makes herself useful grabbing her own box and tossing in the folded throws and cushions.

“Obviously we’re going Jurassic Park for Danny-boy. I’m thinking - - hmmmm,” Annie makes a production out of thinking it over as she crams way too many cushions into the box, hitching her ass up over the top of the cardboard to hold it in place as she tries to tape the top shut. “Fairies and unicorns for Emma?”

Laughing, Beth nods, and Annie fist pumps, accidentally releasing the box, letting the cardboard flap flop open again.

“Aunt Annie, killing it as always,” Annie enthuses, even as she scrambles to try and seal the box again. “Okay, Janey, I’m going to say forest creatures.”

Blinking over at Annie, Beth can’t quite wipe the surprise from her face, even as an unexpectedly warm feeling unfurls in Beth’s chest at Annie’s accuracy.

“You should see the toybox I ordered for her,” Beth says in lieu of confirmation. “It’s white, but it has these like, black stencilled bears and foxes on it. _So_ cute.”

“Adorbs,” Annie agrees, finally getting the box done and shoving it into the corner. “As for Kenny - - huh…”

Beth lets it sit for a moment before putting Annie out of her misery.

“No theme,” she says with a slight pout, and Annie blinks over at her, surprised. Beth shrugs. “He’s almost thirteen. Highschool is around the corner, and I figure soon his interests are going to be more - - I don’t know, but more than superhero movies.”

“I don’t know, I feel like the midnight screening of whatever Marvel movie came out last would tell you otherwise,” Annie says, but then she tilts her head in concession. “But I mean, he’s certainly going to be more into, like.” She gestures to Beth’s chest. “Boobs.”

“Please do not gesture to my body when you talk about my son’s future interests.”

“I didn’t mean yours specifically, god. That’s very edible of you, Bethie.”

Squinting over at Annie as she wraps another frame, Beth says: “Do you mean oedipal?”

“Edible, oedipal, whatever,” Annie scoffs. “All I’m saying is you need to start prepping that kid for puberty, otherwise he’s going to be a total mouth breather when it comes to the ladies, just like his dad.”

The thought alone is enough to deepen Beth’s frown, to turn her attention back to the frames in her hands, her mind drifting to Judith, to how she’s always spoiled Dean, protected him, supported him without consequence, and god, does Beth do that? She can’t help the picture of a grown-up Kenny in her head, living on her couch and talking about another broken marriage or, worse, a failed career. She exhales a little too harshly.

“Hey, maybe you can get gangfriend to teach him!”

Beth startles, looking over at Annie, feeling a white-hot surge of panic erupt in her chest.

“Kenny is not getting into crime, Annie.”

And it’s enough to make Annie reel back, her lip curling and her forehead furrowing in a complete _what the fuck?_ expression. It takes her a minute to speak again, to formulate the words, but when she does, she layers her joking tone on a little too thick.

“Obviously. What are you talking about? I meant with the ladies. Like, there’s no way that that guy isn’t smooth as hell.”

And, right, Beth thinks, swallowing hard, diverting her attention back to the packing box beneath her. Of course that’s what she meant. It’s _Annie_ , after all. Beth slips another wrapped frame into the box. She tries to steady her tone.

“And you would know that how exactly?”

It’s enough to make Annie scoff, loud and clear, unplugging the lamp on the buffet and rolling up the cord. She grabs one of the bread ties from Beth’s pile of ‘packing hacks’ she’d googled, making neat work of twisting it up.

“Like, he seduced your prude-ass _and_ got you to leave your husband of twenty years, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t get me to do anything, if anything - -”

If anything, Beth seduced _him_ , but that fact has remained blissfully out of Annie’s knowledge bank, and Beth’s not sure she could handle the jokes or double entendres that Annie would no doubt work into every possible conversation if that knowledge was deposited with her. Beth clears her throat, getting ready to talk about her ideas for a theme for Marcus’ room instead when the front door springs open and Ruby steps through, clutching a dish full of Stan’s chilli.

“Sorry I’m late,” she moans. “Some mom’s car broke down in the school carpark after the PTA meeting, _right_ by the exit. Gridlocked the entire thing like it was damn Black Friday’s sales. I swear, a few of those bitches were about to have nervous breakdowns.”

Annie’s at her side before Ruby can get two steps in, surging up onto her tiptoes and lifting the lid off the chilli, sticking her nose into it and taking a long, wet sniff.

“ _And_ he can cook? You should marry that man, Ruby Hill,” Annie hums, and Ruby rolls her eyes, snapping the lid shut and striding out of Annie’s reach.

Ruby’s ducking around the dividing wall into the living room when she lets out a low, long whistle, and Beth clambers to her tired feet, stepping into the room beside her. With all the pictures off the walls, the lamps, vases and knick knacks packed, the TV back in its box, the room looks remarkably barren, even with the furniture still laid out. It’s enough that the room even has a slight echo, the sound reverberating back to them as if in accusation.

“Weird, right?” Beth says, and Ruby nods beside her.

“You’re not kidding. Should I have brought bowls and forks too?”

“It’s okay, I’ve left a few out.”

Pulling the pot of chilli out of Ruby’s arms, she walks her to the almost equally empty kitchen, watching as Ruby takes it all in behind her. Beth flips the oven on to pre-heat, resting the pot onto the counter.

“How was the PTA meeting otherwise?” Beth asks, grabbing Ruby a plastic cup and hovering it over the bottles of liquor Beth’s left out – all the ones with less than a quarter left that she hadn’t wanted to move. Ruby waits until Beth is hovering over the whiskey before she nods, and Beth pours her a generous cup.

“Same old. Lacey Warren had a meltdown about some kid’s lychee allergy. Like that broke-ass school can afford to throw those into their fruit cups. They’ll exclusively be serving celery sticks and gluten free crackers by the end of the year, I swear to god.”

Beth laughs, wrinkling up her nose as she passes Ruby her drink.

“God, she’s just like Monica at Kenny’s school. I can’t say I’ll miss her,” Beth says, and Ruby arches an eyebrow, taking a long sip of her drink.

“Seriously? Babe, at least Monica’s already rolled over for you. You’re about to have a whole lotta new PTA bitches sniffing around your ass, _especially_ when you rock up to orientation with gangfriend.”

If the hoot from the dining room is anything to go by, Annie has chosen that exact moment to give up on her own packing and steamroll in behind them, clutching her now-empty cup of vermouth as she moves towards the kitchen.

Beth rolls her eyes, busying herself with stirring the chilli, getting it ready for the re-heat, but Ruby’s words sit uncomfortably against the grain in her head. It’s not a _now_ problem she tries to remind herself. There are only six weeks left of the school year, and thankfully all the kids’ schools had agreed to let them stay until the end of it before they’d need to move to a school in the new district. It’s wiggle room Beth will take right now, especially with the looming pressure of the move. She shifts her weight, tries to roll her shoulders back again, loosen herself up.

“It’ll probably just be me at orientation anyway, so I’m sure the PTA moms will be bored in minutes,” Beth says, and both Annie and Ruby make disbelieving sounds behind her. It’s Ruby who breaks the otherwise quiet though:

“I don’t think you’ll be that lucky, B. I don’t know that man well, but from what I do, and what we’ve managed to pry from your cold, dead hands, he takes Dad’ing pretty seriously.”

“In more ways than one, I bet,” Annie adds, somehow having found her way close enough to punch Beth in the arm, and Beth flushes, bright and pink in reply. “But seriously. Can’t say I love the guy, but Rio’s no Deansy. He seems like he actually wants to do that shit.”

And it’s not exactly like they’re wrong. Beth tries to will the colour out of her cheeks, distracting herself by shifting the liquor bottles on her bench into alphabetical order, and it at least seems to be enough to make Ruby change the subject.

“Where _are_ the kids anyway?” Ruby asks, so maybe it’s more a pivot than an outright change, and Beth finds her blush deepening, her desire to get out of this conversation only growing more urgent. She tries to stand up a little straighter, playing it like it’s nothing, waving a hand out flippantly behind herself:

“Oh, Rio has them.”

It earns her a pointed silence before Ruby breaks it:

“ _Oh_ , he does, does he?”

Sucking it up, Beth turns around, and she’s not sure if it’s because of the look on her face or the exhausted slump to her body, but both Annie and Ruby’s expressions instantly soften.

“God, what are they doing?” Annie asks, scrunching up her nose as if she’s imagining a hundred hilarious circumstances, and Beth laughs a little breathlessly, her own nose scrunching up the same.

“He took them to play tennis,” she says, her blush deepening at the memory of him showing up at her house at three on the dot in a white polo and navy tennis jacket. She doesn’t know how she’d looked at him, just that whatever had been on her face had led him to press against her briefly and say _later, mami_. “And then out for dinner, and maybe a movie? They were going to see how they all felt.”

“Tennis?” Ruby says, her eyebrows disappearing into her hairline, and Beth nods, a bubble of laughter forming in her throat in disbelief.

“Yep. He’s a member of that club out on Elm? Apparently he plays regularly.”

At their unanimous looks of shock, Beth holds up her hands as if to say _I know_ , before turning her attention back to the oven to see if it’s ready.

“Please tell me he wears those tiny white shorts,” Annie says with a groan, and Beth rolls her eyes, not even dignifying Annie with an answer. Instead, she redirects her attention to dinner, finding herself happy with the temperature of the oven, she grabs the pot, stirring it a few times again.

“And doesn’t that club have a membership fee of like, an internal organ?” Annie adds, squinting over at her, before hearing herself and shooting an apologetic look at Ruby, who only holds up a hand in a _no offence taken_ gesture. “How much money does that guy even have?”

“Enough to pay people to pack up his apartment for him,” Beth says, lifting the pot and sliding it into the oven. She realises her mistake as soon as she hears Annie make a shrill noise of outrage behind her.

“Wait, you can _pay_ people to do this for you? Why are we doing this shit? Get your sugar daddy to like, snap his fingers, sis.”

Pivoting back around, Beth feels herself turn eight different shades of red her gaze fixing first on Ruby, who’s giving Annie a filthy look, and then Annie, who’s own gaze is fixed, quasi outraged, mostly smug, straight back on Beth.

“He is not my - - ” she lowers her voice, like anyone else could hear. “My _sugar daddy_. We are partners.” She straightens her back. “Anyway, he offered, and I said no. Because, as established, he is _not_ my - - ”

She’s cut off by the looks on both Ruby and Annie’s faces, and Beth flushes, instantly regretting telling them that. Just - - he _had_. Had even tried to insist it, joking that she could consider it a perk, but Beth had balked at the implication. It’s not like he’d do it for anyone else he works with.

Then again.

Maybe he would?

The whole thing posed more questions than it had answered, and Beth had decided that the best course of action was just to not engage with it entirely. Besides, she liked to think of packing as an opportunity to Marie Kondo her home and her life anyway.

Still, it seems Annie doesn’t share the opinion.

“You’re seriously saying that we could be at a bar right now drinking expensive, fruity cocktails and pretending we had no problems or jobs like Kyle and Lisa, but instead we’re here boxing up your house and drinking the last of your liquor cabinet out of plastic party cups?”

Beth frowns, suddenly feeling the crick in her neck all the worse, and she just shrugs, avoiding eye contact with them, and painting on a grin.

“I do not need his help,” Beth says with a put-upon laugh. “And you know whoever he like - - _hired_ wouldn’t have known what they were doing. This way, I’ll know where everything is, what boxes they’re in, that they were packed right. It’s just better this way, trust me.”

“You probably will pack it better,” Ruby says after a minute, shrugging. “Those services never get it quite right, but you know what? You’re a lot better equipped to _unpack_ when you haven’t killed yourself packing.”

Beth fiddles with the knob on the stove, pointedly avoiding eye contact and somehow resisting the urge to massage her shoulders again.

“I mean, I get it,” Ruby says gently. “You know how long it took me to lean on Stan. I still find it hard sometimes. But come on, you can’t keep shutting him down.”

Ruby gives her a loaded look, and she knows she means the house, the way Beth had moved him to her budget, her parameters, the way he’d done it – a fact Annie can never know. Still. Beth looks away.

“Seriously, B. I mean, he’s obviously all in at this point. He let you take him to Wayne’s Wacky Warehouse Sale on Main. If that isn’t like, some _serious_ signals, I don’t know what is.”

The memory is a day or so old but it still makes Beth instantly flush, almost to the point where she regrets having told them about it at all. After they’d agreed to shop around for a new bed, they’d struggled to find one they could both agree on.

Or, well.

They _hadn’t_ , just it was another thing out of Beth’s price range.

Rio had taken her to some sort of obscenely fancy boutique furniture store (what sort of furniture store was _by appointment only_?) and they’d spent the better part of an afternoon looking at plush mattresses and elegant frames, until Beth had fallen in love with an art deco metal frame and a mattress that had felt like drifting on a cloud. Rio had seemed pleased with her choice, and had been starting the process of paying for it and organising the delivery when Beth had asked a passing shop assistant for the price, organising her budget in her head, and had what must’ve been a minor brain aneurism at the price.

She’d cancelled the whole thing.

After that, she’d insisted on taking control of finding a bed, visiting a number of outlets on her own before finally dragging him along to the warehouse sale, _convinced_ that they’d find something there. And he _had_ let her take him, had barely even complained, even if he had looked borderline murderous at every other customer in a two-foot radius (which was - - a lot of customers. Wayne’s Wacky Warehouse Sales always packed out) and grimaced at every bed frame they’d looked at.

At her extended silence, Ruby sighs, sliding off her stool. “I don’t know about you guys, but I am starving, so I’m servin’ up. We all good for drinks?”

“Good,” Annie says, holding up her plastic cup of newly topped-up vermouth, and Beth holds hers up for a refill.

*

They’re stacking the last boxes from the foyer with the rest of them in Dean’s old office when the front door slips open, and Kenny steps through, a content smile on his sleepy face as he scurries over to Beth, enfolding her in a quick hug.

“Hey, you,” she whispers, kissing the crown of his head. “Have fun?”

“The club was so cool, and I didn’t think I’d like tennis, but it’s like, it’s really full on, in a cool way. Rio’s going to keep teaching me,” he enthuses. “Even his friend, Gretchen, said I was a natural.”

“Yeah?” Beth says, pleased. She’s only met Gretchen a few times now, and always for work, but she’s found that she likes her. She’s a little colder than Beth’s used to, a little harder to read, but she’s smart and speaks to Beth like she is too. Plus Beth’s seen her tell Rio off almost every single time she’s seen her, which wins more brownie points in Beth’s books than she’s inclined to admit. “I bet you are.”

Kenny beams up at her, turning towards the stairs for bed when Annie squawks, demanding a hug, and Beth finds herself padding out into the hallway, leaning against the doorframe as she watches Rio crouch down in the entry way and somehow manage to help unlace both Danny and Emma’s shoes with a snoring Jane propped up on his hip.

“Hi,” she says quietly, and Rio blinks up at her, his face soft, exhaustion written into his features. He doesn’t return the greeting so much as tilt his chin up in acknowledgement, his lips twisting warmly as he looks her over, his gaze briefly lingering on where her t-shirt strains over her breasts, before pulling his attention back to the kids.

“Think we might need to leave bath time til’ the mornin’, ma,” he tells her, offhand, and Beth nods, stroking Emma’s hair as she and her brother sleepwalk up the stairs towards bed.

“What did you do to them?” she asks, amused, and she turns slightly, reaching to take Jane out of Rio’s arms, but he shakes his head, moving towards the stairs to take her up to bed himself. The gesture of it is enough to shock her, to curl somewhere hot inside of her, and Beth’s about to follow when she hears Ruby cough behind her.

“I think that’s our cue to leave, babe,” she says, a look on her face that Beth can’t read, but she thinks it might be a more PG-version of whatever is on Annie’s face. Her sister fans herself when she catches Beth’s gaze.

“Woah, mama,” Annie says. “Is there anything hotter than a good dad? Like, can he carry _me_ to bed like that?”

“ _Annie_ ,” Beth hisses, and Annie holds up her hands.

“What? Don’t be greedy, Beth! At least let me have the fantasy.”

She looks at her sister then, and sees it, the moment Annie catches the flush on her chest. Her mouth opens, lips widening into a salacious grin.

“He totally carries you to bed, doesn’t he?”

“On that note,” Ruby says, grabbing Annie’s arm. “We’ll see you tomorrow, B.”

“I want to stay,” Annie whines, and Ruby rolls her eyes.

“Oh, so you’re catching the bus home then?”

With a sigh, Annie throws up her hands, letting Ruby lead her out, and Beth tosses them a thanks before she looks up the stairs. She’s about to follow when she decides against it, feeling herself oddly flushed at the thought of Rio taking care of the kids on his own, of the independence of it, so grabs herself a drink and flops onto the couch instead.

It’s not long before Rio’s coming back down the stairs anyway, his steps as light as they usually are, even as he drops heavily into the couch beside her. He plucks her cup straight from her hands, taking a long drink and sighing.

“Four’s too many,” he tells her decidedly, and Beth laughs.

“You’re about to be living with five,” she reminds him, and then: “It was your idea too, so I’m not sure how much you get to complain.”

When he doesn’t reply to that, Beth stands up, heading back to the bar cart with the last of her unpacked booze still on it, pouring herself a fresh drink and topping up the one that’s now Rio’s.

“You’re late home,” she says, as she sits back on the couch. “I take it they wrangled you into the movie?”

She already has an apology on her tongue for the ninety minutes of animated dogs he had to endure, when Rio shakes his head.

“Nah, we played at the club for a few hours and then got dinner at that diner off Main.”

He takes another sip of his drink, eyeing Beth lazily, and she finds herself shifting in her seat, pushing a leg up so that she can face him. He’s slumped in his seat so low his ass almost dangles off the couch cushion, his head pressed low into the back of the sofa.

“So you just ate until - - ” she checks her watch. “Almost nine?”

“And talked,” he adds, turning the plastic cup over in his hands, swirling it a little. “Then took ‘em for a walk to burn off all that milkshake energy. They hadn’t been to a playground at night before. Bit o’ a novelty. They forgot all about cartoon dogs.”

His voice is low, deep and husky, and Beth finds herself a little breathless – can’t seem to help herself – and it’s only made worse when Rio’s gaze finally flicks back up to hers.

“Jane’s got a real fuckin’ mouth on her.”

It’s so sudden, so unexpected, Beth barks on a laugh, wrinkling her nose, nodding.

“Sorry,” she says, and Rio huffs out a laugh of his own, and Beth looks at him again, then adds (because how could she not?), “Thank you.”

And Rio doesn’t reply to that. In fact, it takes him a moment to react at all, they’re just staring at each other with their plastic cups of basic liquors, and Beth thinks about what Ruby had said, what Annie had, but then – then Rio just leans over, brushing her temple with his finger, pushing her hair back, and Beth’s suddenly hot all over, trembling with need, and she’s sliding away from him, down onto the floor, pushing her cup aside and crawling up between his legs. He just stares at her, surprised, but it’s quickly replaced by a hot look as her fingers struggle with his belt, whipping it off, before she pulls his jeans and underwear down in one swift, easy motion.

She sucks a hickey into the inside of his thigh, shocked at her own need, her own urgency and just - - god, she never liked doing this before Rio, never _wanted_ to like she does with him, and maybe has never wanted to as much as she does right now. He’s already half hard by the time she kisses her way to his cock, his hand gently coming to the back of her head, not to push, but to stroke her hair out of her face as she sucks the head of him into her mouth. He hisses as she swirls her tongue there, her fingers coming up to circle the base of his cock, her other hand pushing his thigh out, digging her nails into the flesh there in the way she knows he likes.

She takes him into her mouth deeper too quickly, gagging a little, and having to ease up, spluttering, and she’s mortified by her over eagerness and her inexperience, before she distracts herself with trying to rewrite this history and find a better rhythm again between her mouth and her hand, and she knows he’s probably had better, but she wouldn’t guess it from the muffled sounds he’s making, and when she looks up at him through her eyelashes, his jaw is so firmly clenched shut, his lips sucked in so as not to make a noise that could tempt the kids downstairs, that Beth finds she doesn’t care. Thinks that maybe - - maybe the fact that it’s _her_ might trump those other times, like the fact that it’s _him_ trumps all of hers.

It’s not long before he’s coming, a low, gravelly groan escaping his throat despite herself, and Beth swallows, slightly uncomfortably around him, rocking back onto her haunches and wiping off her mouth. She takes a quick drink of bourbon to chase away the taste as Rio pulls his underwear and pants back up before he’s yanking her up onto his lap so quickly she almost knees his dick.

He hisses at the near miss, before unbuttoning her jeans and shoving his hand down the front of them, groaning, louder this time, when he feels just how wet she is. Beth’s hips stutter, a gasp escaping her own lips as she lets her head drop down into the nook of Rio’s shoulder, panting wetly there as Rio slides a finger inside her, fucking her with it with a well-practiced ease. She keens when he adds a second, trying to keep her voice down.

“Thought I - - I owed you an orga - - ” she breathes, and Rio laughs huskily, tangling his free hand in the back of her hair, holding her close.

“I ain’t countin’,” he tells her, still fucking her with his fingers, and then it’s Beth huffing out a laugh.

“You’re always counting,” she says, and as soon as she says it, he yanks her hair back, pulling her out of his shoulder and exposing the line of her neck. He lowers his mouth to her clavicle, sucking a hickey there before he nips his way down her chest.

“Lift up your shirt,” he tells her, his hands occupied in her hair and her cunt, and Beth shivers, clenching around his fingers at the order, and he slows his pace until she complies, tugging her t-shirt up enough to expose her bra to him. He buries his face in her cleavage, rubbing his stubble against the soft, untouched skin of her breasts in the way he knows makes her keen, bucking down against his fingers. He bites into the flesh of her left breast, nosing his way beneath her bra cup.

“Get it out.”

Beth’s trembling hands come up, freeing her breast from her bra, and Rio hisses, grazing his teeth immediately against her nipple before sucking a hickey into the skin beside it, and shoving his thumb up to roughly circle her clit. It’s only moments then before she’s coming hard, collapsing against his chest, shuddering when her bare breast grazes against the zipper on his jacket, and she lowers a hand to pull her bra back up and her shirt down. His hand is still in her hair, the other in her cunt, and he gives his fingers one last crook that makes her gasp before he’s pulling out of her entirely, wiping his fingers on her panties on his way out of them, and buttoning up her jeans.

“House is lookin’ good,” he tells her once both their breaths have calmed down, and Beth snorts, still straddling his hips even if she’s mostly still collapsed against his chest.

“It better be. Two days and I’m out of here.”

“You gonna miss it?”

“A little,” she confesses. “There are a lot of bad memories here, I know that, but - - a lot of good ones too.”

His chest basically vibrates below her as he hums, and Beth tilts her head until she can feel the sharp line of his collarbone at her cheek.

“Car Man pickin’ the kids up tomorrow?”

“At four,” Beth says, a seed of dread uncurling in her belly at the thought, and she slumps further into Rio’s chest. He feels it, hand coming up to her back, holding her close.

“You gonna tell him?”

She clenches her eyes shut at the thought, exhaling through her teeth, before she nods sharply in reply.

“Kind of have to, don’t I? I can’t exactly just tell him to drop them off at our house next time and have you answer the door.”

Rio trembles a little below her, and it takes her a moment to realise that he’s laughing. When she glares up at him, he just grins down, but quickly hides it, adopting a faux serious expression in the process.

“It’s one way to do it.”

Beth rolls her eyes.

“Sure, a way I _won’t_ be choosing though. Look, he’s going to pick the kids up, we’ll talk about it, and then he’ll take them for the two weeks to his mom’s place, cool off, and it’ll just - - be whatever it is then.”

It takes Rio a moment to reply to that, and she’s so exhausted she’s almost ready to drift off to sleep when she feels Rio shift beneath her, and his voice rumble out.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” he asks, testing, and Beth looks up at him, her forehead furrowed, and he seems to be debating whether or not to elaborate, but in the end, he does: “Tellin’ him when he takes ‘em? Wouldn’t it be better to tell him when he drops ‘em back?”

And she knows what he means. Ruby had said the same thing when she’d told her earlier that night, not long before Rio had gotten here.

“We’re kind of out of time,” Beth says, toes curling into the couch cushions. “And that’s on me, I know that. But - - but this way, y’know, he can talk to his mom about it, and the kids will be there to distract him, instead of him sitting alone in the lake house at South Haven and stewing on it.”

 _And plotting_ , she thinks, biting the inside of her cheek.

“Okay,” Rio concedes, but he doesn’t sound convinced. “So you gonna tell him here?”

Beth nods.

“Rip it off like a bandaid. I figure he comes in, we talk, I give the kids some ice cream money,” she sighs. “I’m going to give Judith - - his mom a call after he leaves. Just to let her know that I’m moving in with someone, that I’ve told Dean, just so that she can be prepared for whatever mood he’s in when he gets to her, and…”

Beth trails off, exhausted at even the thought of it all, and Rio doesn’t probe, doesn’t so much as shift beneath her, and Beth finds herself oddly glad for it. His hand is so gentle, stroking its way up and down her back, that she could almost fall asleep when Rio suddenly says:

“Four?”

It takes Beth a moment to process the word, to disentangle it from its many meanings, and when she does, she sits up suddenly, enough that she can stare down at him, her forehead creased and her lips tugged down.

“I don’t want you here for it.”

Rio looks up at her at that, his eyes half-lidded, his face an impossible, unfair neutral.

“Why not?”

Beth laughs in disbelief.

“Why do you think?”

Shifting his weight beneath her, Rio just shrugs, his hands finding her hips, playing with the bottom of her t-shirt as he glances back up at her.

“Me here, he won’t play up.”

“Or he’ll play up _more_. You’re a real sticking point for him, you know that, right?”

“Why? Coz I fucked his wife? Ain’t my fault he dropped the ball.”

And she’s not sure whether to laugh at him or scream at him, her head shaking as she looks down at him, trying to determine his own degree of seriousness – even, god, his own _memory_.

“Do you remember how you shot him?”

He waves a hand out, like she’s said he forgot to bring a salad to a birthday barbeque, like it’s _no big thing_ , and Beth flounders, crawling off Rio and standing up. She points a long finger down at him.

“You will not be here, okay?”

Rio rocks his jaw from side to side, staring up at her, his eyes suddenly too alert, and Beth squares her stance, feeling authoritative with the benefit of being the only one of them standing, but it feels more like a relief than a win when he slowly nods and says, “Okay.”

*

“I don’t wanna leave him,” Jane howls, a line of snot and drool collecting in her dubby, which she’s pressed against her face, and Beth sighs, stroking her hand down Jane’s hair in reply. It figures. Who cares about her bedroom, or the only home she’s ever known, or even the treehouse - - Jane’s most upset about leaving Mr. Cheese, the little, blobby character she’d drawn in chalk onto the backyard fence last week.

“Well, you know, I think if you draw Mr. Cheese into the fence of our new home, he might follow us there.”

Jane blinks big, blue eyes back at her, her little mouth pouting in confusion.

“How?” she whines, and Beth widens her own eyes, swiping her thumb across Jane’s cheeks to catch a few of her tears.

“That’s just how magic works.”

Jane repeats her words back verbatim, a breathless tone to her little voice, and sniffles, a glob of snot sucking back up into her nose, and Beth really, really wishes she hadn’t packed up the tissues already. Still, Jane gives her one last cuddle before deciding she needs to go outside and tell Mr. Cheese how to get to the new house, and Beth sighs in relief, checking her watch.

It’s almost five and there’s still no sign of Dean.

With a groan, Beth stretches up to stand, her body aching from so long crouched down packing. With the TV and the X-Box unplugged and packed too, there’s not a lot of easy distractions for the kids, which has made them all jittery with energy that does nothing for Beth’s own fraying nerves. She’d managed to scrounge up a few sheets of paper and some markers, which has at least distracted Danny and Emma, who are sprawled out on the floor drawing, and she’d given Kenny her phone to play Candy Crush, but with all their suitcases packed by the door, it just feels like a waiting game.

As it does for the next hour.

And then the next.

She ends up ordering pizzas for the kids for dinner because her only other meal is the sandwich she’d made herself before turning the fridge off that morning (it’s got to be off two days before you can move it), and she’s pissed off enough by the time the car rolls up that she’s practically storming towards the door, flinging it open ready to tear Dean a new asshole, only to stop dead in her tracks.

Because it’s not Dean.

It’s _Rio_.

She blinks, looking past him out into the night, but the street is almost empty behind him the only thrum of activity coming from the Porters’ house two doors down who are setting up their son’s telescope in the backyard, After a moment, Beth holds the door open wider, pulling Rio inside. The sound of it is enough to make Jane spring out into the hallway, throwing her arms wide, happily yelling, “Daddy!”

And then, when she sees that it’s Rio, dressed in a black jacket and his beanie, her mouth falls open, her forehead furrowed, and she ducks back out of the room only to run back in a second later, throwing her arms wide again like a happy little echo, yelling, “Mr. Rio!” instead. Rio looks over at Beth, confused, but crouches down and lets Jane throw herself into his arms for a hug anyway.

“Didn’t expect to see you, kid,” he tells her, and Jane leans back in his arms, tilting her head sideways at him.

“Daddy’s late,” she says with a disappointed sigh, her tone almost exactly that of what Beth’s had been on the phone to Ruby earlier when she’d called to ask how it had gone, and Beth flushes in embarrassment, something not helped when Rio’s eyes go to the suitcases stacked by the door, and then to Beth, his jaw rocking at the words.

“He musta got held up by somethin’ real important,” he says, the words loaded just for Beth, and Beth sighs, exhausted.

“No, he was just having fun lunch with his friend, and said he lost time, which is silly. You can’t _loses_ time.”

“Lose, baby, not loses,” Beth corrects, and Rio stares at her, lowering Jane to the floor, and god, Beth almost wishes she’d stay, but can’t say she’s surprised when Jane darts back into the near-empty living room to throw herself on her sister. Rio’s still watching Beth though, his hands coming out in front of him, his lips sucking in briefly, before he gestures out almost too-casually.

“Thought he was gettin’ here at four.”

Beth sighs at that, tossing her own hands up, and heading back into the living room, stepping around Emma and Danny on the floor as she does it. She grabs her glass off the coffee table, topping it up at the bar cart. She tilts the bottle towards Rio in offer, but he just shakes his head. She doesn’t answer him otherwise until she’s led him back out into the foyer, carefully out of the children’s earshot, and when she does, her voice is small regardless.

“He’s running late.”

It’s enough to make Rio arch an eyebrow as he looks her over, a look she can’t place crossing his face before he speaks.

“Almost four hours, that ain’t _runnin’ late_ , ma.”

“What do you want me to say? He doesn’t come into Detroit much anymore, he wanted to catch up with a friend, and he got held up,” she flails briefly, and then scowls over at him, annoyed she suddenly feels like she has to defend herself, when she’d specifically told him not to come. “You’re not even supposed to be here.”

And that at least is enough to make him, lighten - - or - - or not lighten. Just darken in a different way, his eyes drifting down her body, his hands burying in the pockets of his jacket as he almost imperceptibly shifts his hips closer towards her.

“Figured you’d be lonely,” he says, voice a little loaded, and Beth gives him a look, taking a sip of her drink. She opens her mouth to say something snide, what, she’s not sure, when she hears another car pull up outside. Darting towards the front door, she looks through the peephole, anxiousness spiking in her gut when she sees Dean clamber out of his car, a pep to his step until he sees Rio’s car on the other side of her driveway, and just - - god, Beth curses, polishing off her drink, before gesturing Rio towards her bedroom.

“Wait in there,” at his disbelieving look, she lets a pleading note enter her voice. “Please.”

He looks like there’s nothing in the world that he’d rather do less, his mouth hanging open for a minute, like he’s going to say something, but the desperation in her look must be earnest enough, must be pathetic enough, that he lets his mouth slowly fall shut again, exhaling a little sharply through his nose as he nods in surrender.

“Thank you,” she says, trying to smooth down her shirt, get a handle on her fraying nerves as Rio crosses the hall towards her bedroom, and she thinks maybe it’ll be okay, maybe she can get her bearings on this again, maybe Dean will let her explain the car away, only - -

Only Rio hasn’t made it to her bedroom yet, and the door springs open, and then Dean’s there, his keys in the lock, his expression gormless – Rio the first thing he sees.

*

Time seems to slow to a stop, to turn itself inwards on the moment, until all Beth can see is the shocked and furious heat in Dean’s stare and Rio’s cool indifference as they size each other up across the empty hallway, the only sign that time hasn’t in the playful chatter of the kids in the next room, giggling over something Danny’s drawn.

She has no idea how long they stand like that, just knows that it’s enough time for Rio to make a choice, pulling his hand off the handle to Beth’s bedroom, burying his hands in the pockets of his jacket as he comes to stand in the middle of the hall, shifting his body to face Dean, even though they’re feet apart, and the movement seems to be enough to spring Dean into action.

“Tell me what I’m looking at, Beth,” he says, his voice tight, his gaze never drifting from Rio, and Rio snorts, opening his mouth to reply, but Beth quickly steps in, moving to stand in front of Dean, trying to block them from each other’s view, like they can’t just see straight over her head. She’s not sure what she’s going to say until the words come out, clearer, firmer, than perhaps she feels. Her heart is throbbing in her throat, pulsing behind her teeth as she presses a hand to Dean’s chest, like it might help her stop him from making any quick or sudden movements.

“Rio and I are seeing each other,” she says, voice calm as she can make it, and then, because like a bandaid, right? She adds: “More than seeing each other. We’re moving in together.”

As soon as the words are out of her mouth, Dean makes a loud sound something between a laugh and a yell, and it’s enough for the room next to them to go silent, and she can’t help the way her face darts over to it, and god, _the kids_ , she draws a stuttering breath, and Dean rocks forwards, pushing his chest back against her hand, pulling her attention back to him.

“You can’t be serious,” Dean hisses, eyes only leaving Beth to glare daggers again at Rio.

“You knew I was seeing someone,” she says, trying to scrounge up whatever control over this situation that she can, and Dean scoffs, throwing his arms out.

“Yeah, I thought someone from carpool, _Beth_! Sorry I don’t _immediately_ think you’re capable of becoming some sort of - - sort of _mob wife_ , I mean, Jesus.”

And it’s a lie, and they both know it. She’s sure he’s known, sure the kids have even told him, but maybe he just hadn’t wanted to believe it, she doesn’t know, all she knows right now is that she desperately wants him to lower his voice, and she hisses that at him, trying to shush him, but Dean doesn’t listen, doesn’t care enough to.

“And what? You’re telling me now? We hand the keys over _tomorrow_ \- -”

“You’re right, I should’ve told you earlier,” Beth agrees, her tone softening, hating the way she can feel Rio’s eyes snap onto her, the way she can feel his anger hot in this room, bristling at the back of her neck.

She’d hoped agreeing might have diffused him, but it only seems to straighten Dean’s back, to make him more self-righteous, more sure of his own moral superiority in the moment of it all.

“You can’t move in with him,” he tells her, his voice firm. “You can’t move the _kids_ in with him. It’s just - - it’s not happening, so I hope you haven’t signed off on anything, Beth, because you - - ”

And she opens her mouth to reply, to interject, but suddenly she feels Rio’s shadow at her back, the long, lean line of him towering over her, sandwiching her between him and Dean.

“She can do whatever she wants, man,” Rio says, voice low and loaded, and Dean’s gaze snaps back to him, his lip curling, standing taller, a head above Rio and god, he must be almost twice his weight, and Beth knows that doesn’t matter, knows exactly what Rio is capable of and what Dean isn’t when it comes to this, but she can’t help but lean back, protectively covering Rio’s body with her own.

“You know, actually, when it comes to the kids, she can’t, so why don’t you just go and like, jack some cars or blow up somebody else’s family, or whatever else it is you do.”

Rio laughs, something low and ugly that curls in the space between them like a poisoned chalice.

“See, from what I heard, it don’t seem like you needed any help blowin’ up this family.”

It’s enough to make Dean’s eyes widen, for the hot red flush creeping up his neck to explode across his face, and Beth feels the tightness in his chest, the rapid flutter of his heart, as she tries to hold him at bay. Curling her fingers a little, she gets Dean’s attention again, his gaze fixing on her with an anger she’s never seen in him before.

“Dean,” she says, but before she can continue, he’s snapping back at her.

“It’s not happening, okay?”

“Is _is_ ,” Beth says, standing up a little straighter. “Rio and I are moving in next week, and then I’d like the kids there by the Friday after. It’s what we agreed on.”

“On time, preferably,” Rio snips, and it’s enough to make Beth spin around, glowering at him, but Rio’s smile is sharkish, and she sees it, the way that his fingers twitch, the set to his jaw, and god, he’s _seconds_ away from hitting him, and the children are so close, and finally Beth’s had enough.

With her hand still on Dean’s chest, she pushes him slightly back, letting him go.

“You, stay here,” she tells him, then, looking back at Rio. “You, come with me.”

Grabbing Rio by the shirt, she pulls him gracelessly down the hallway, feeling the tight shift in his body as she does it, finally yanking open her bedroom door and shoving him inside, trying to ignore the way Dean lets loose a wet, shaky breath behind her the second they’re out of sight, and god, this is just a mess.

Before Rio can even say a word, Beth spins on him, holding up a hand to him.

“This is why I didn’t want you here,” she hisses. “You’re making it worse.”

Rio barks on a laugh at that, a look of naked anger on his face.

“Oh, _I’m_ makin’ it worse? Okay.” He breathes out a coarse little laugh, stepping closer to her with all the graceful agility of a predator, but Beth stands her ground, waiting until they’re toe-to-toe to look up at him, keeping her face as carefully neutral as she can.

“He don’t respect you,” Rio tells her through bared teeth, close enough that she can feel his breath on the side of her face. “He don’t respect your time, he don’t respect your choices, he don’t respect your relationships, he _don’t respect you_.”

“I know. And you do, I know that too,” she tells him, because he does, and she does. “So trust me to handle this.”

She just stares at him then, eyes unblinking and steady in a way she doesn’t feel, and his gaze doesn’t move from hers, and she’s just starting to wonder how long this staring contest is going to last when Rio finally tears his gaze away from her, exhaling sharply. He nods, and Beth’s shoulders slump with relief.

“Thank you,” she says, and he turns back to her, a look she can’t read on his face as she slips back out the room to Dean.

*

To her surprise, Dean isn’t waiting for her in the foyer, nor in the kitchen, or the dining room, and when Beth checks the living room, she’s only met with the quiet, subdued faces of the children. Danny, Emma and Jane are cuddled up together in the corner of the couch, their faces pale and their eyes half-lidded with a sort of nervous exhaustion that breaks Beth’s heart, but Kenny has stayed standing, hovering over them like a protector.

When he sees her, he scurries over, his own eyes wide as he stops in front of her, shuffling awkwardly for a moment before he says:

“Dad’s outside. He said he needed to get some air.”

Beth nods, slipping on the softest smile she can manage, running a hand back through Kenny’s hair as she says, “Thanks, honey,” and starts towards the backyard.

She doesn’t make it far when Kenny’s voice breaks behind her.

“I told him that we like Rio,” he says. “That we want to live in the new house with you and him. And see dad too, but - - we don’t want him to do what he did last time. Where we stayed at grandma’s, and didn’t get to see you. When you guys were fighting.”

For a moment, Beth can’t hear anything else. Like the sound has been sucked from the room, from her head, rendering her not only deaf, but somehow mute too, her lips working, but not a sound coming out of them that she can hear. It takes too much to turn around, to look at where Kenny is staring right back at her, his eyes wide, but his cherubic jaw set. Behind him, the others sit on the couch, staring back at her too, like the four of them have held their own little counsel, like they’ve _talked_ about this, and suddenly Beth can hear again, but it’s not a sound from this moment, it’s Ruby’s voice, from all that time ago, at the hospital with Sara, telling her _you think that you’re protecting them from these things but you’re not_.

Beth blinks, suddenly feeling an overwhelming pressure building behind her eyes. She sniffs, tries to catch her breath.

“Are you okay?” Kenny asks her, his voice clear as a bell, and Beth looks over to him again, nodding. She steps close again, cupping his cheek with her hand.

“I am, you’re very sweet for asking. I’m going to go talk to your dad. Why don’t you guys check your bedrooms one last time? Make sure you haven’t left anything behind that you’ll need.”

Kenny opens his mouth, like he wants to say something else, but in the end he just nods, walking back to the couch and tugging Danny up, the girls following close behind as they head up the stairs, and Beth watches them disappear from sight.

When they’re gone, she presses her hand to her mouth, clenching her eyes shut, biting back a sob, before she collects herself, smoothing trembling hands down her belly and turning towards the backyard.

He’s not on the porch, like maybe she’d expected. Rather, he stands well out into the yard, treading out on the neatly mown lawn, his figure casting a long shadow beneath the hazy glow of the porch light. Shivering at the evening chill, Beth folds her arms across her chest, striding out across the yard to meet him.

He watches her come over, his expression only half visible in the dark, but his posture seems softer somehow, almost defeated, and they stand together in silence for a moment before Dean finally breaks it.

“At least you won’t have to worry about the moles anymore,” he says, nudging over one of the puckered bits of earth with his foot. It hadn’t been what she’d expected him to say, and the fact of it makes Beth snorts. Up until the other day, she’d been more worried about Mary Pat’s husband than any potential vermin, but Rio had taken care of that too, showing up with one of his boy’s late in the evening to dig up the taped up bag and take it somewhere Beth isn’t sure she’ll ever know. Not that Rio had offered to share that knowledge with her, and even when she’d bitten the bullet and asked, he’s just said that it’d been _handled_.

She knew better these days than to ask what exactly that meant.

After a minute, Dean turns to her, his expression drawn and urgent.

“I don’t like it, Beth,” he tells her. “I don’t like _him_. And I just. It’s more than that, I don’t _get_ it.”

Beth lets him get it out, lets him get it off his chest, before she thinks of an answer, a response, whatever. She thinks about flinging it back, like she did last year - _what was it about Amber?_ but the thing is, she does get that. For better or worse, she gets the appeal, and she understands why he’d want that instead of her, and it wasn’t _okay_ , but maybe, now - - maybe it just _is_.

After a minute, she shrugs, but she still keeps her voice soft when she says:

“That’s okay. You don’t have to.”

And she’s surprised to find that she means it. She doesn’t need to explain her relationship, not to Dean, because she might not always know what she and Rio are, but it’s been a long time since she’s doubted what they _have_.

When Dean looks at her, really looks at her, Beth smiles gently at him, and adds:

“He makes me really happy.”

It’s enough to make Dean look sharply away, like her happiness is hard for him to witness, and when he speaks again, he doesn’t look at her.

“Do you know what it’s like for me? Hearing the kids talk about him? Telling me all about the fun they have with mommy’s friend. God, he _shot_ me, Beth.”

“And you tried to get him killed.”

Beth shrugs again, her gaze going out over the backyard, eyes drifting up to the thick, black sky. There’s a smattering of stars tonight, but they seem very far away, the glimmer of them being swallowed up by the great maw of the night. It’s somehow both soothing and bleak, and Beth feels suddenly very small in a way that neither frightens nor excites her. Just makes her _feel_.

“They really like him.”

The words are said so quietly, so resignedly that Beth blinks, her gaze snapping back to Dean, and she expects - - she’s not sure, maybe malice, or bitterness, but he just seems tired too.

“They do,” Beth replies, and Dean winces, like he’d hoped for her denial, shuffling his feet on the lawn, and Beth feels a stab of pity.

“He’s not replacing you, you know?” she says. “You’re still their father, nothing’s going to change that. If you step up, if you make sure of that, I’ll make sure of it too.”

And that seems to genuinely surprise him, his face opening until Beth can see every insecurity, every hurt, every flicker of guilt, but it was the right thing to say, she realises, and there’s a comfort at least in that knowing no matter how much they’ve drifted apart, she can still offer him that. Can still read him and diffuse him.

She bites the inside of her cheek.

She knows _too much_ about him.

Sometimes that’s the problem.

So she adds:

“But you’ve got to pick them up on time, Dean. I want this to work between us, which means we _have_ to talk to each other, we have to stick to a schedule. I can’t pick up your slack anymore. You want to be the number one man in their life, you’ve got to act like it.”

His neck has flushed again in something like embarrassment, his eyes carefully avoiding hers as he buries his hands in the pockets of his jeans, scuffing the toes of his worn sneakers on the grass.

“I want it to work too,” he says finally, keeping his gaze down, like a child being reprimanded. “I messed up. I did. I’m sorry.”

Beth nods, almost says _it’s okay_ , but stops herself. She doesn’t want to do that anymore, so instead she says:

“Don’t let it happen again.”

They settle into a silence that – if not quite companionable, is at least diffused, and Beth finds herself enveloped by the peace of the night again. There’s nothing left to pack out here, this conversation at least had, instead of something to be dreaded, and she’s surprised by the wave of relief that hits her, chased quickly by a near crippling exhaustion.

God, she can’t be this tired yet. She’s got to be up by six for the moving truck.

She’s just starting to think about going back inside when Dean breaks the silence.

“What if it doesn’t work out between you two?”

And Beth stares at him, her face open, unguarded, and the thought plagues her sometimes too, but then - - she thinks she doesn’t want to wonder that, doesn’t want to think about the end of it when, in so many ways, they’ve only just begun. So she shrugs again.

“I don’t know.”

Dean opens his mouth to reply, but she holds up her hand to quiet him.

“I’m allowed not to know, Dean.”

He closes his mouth at that, but then he opens it again, and what comes out isn’t what Beth’s expecting.

“I’d like to be involved in choosing the kids’ school,” he says, and Beth blinks, surprised. “I mean, I figure I’ll still come here during the school year for my weeks, stay with my mom, but take them to the South Haven place my weeks during the holidays. So. Yeah. I want to be a part of picking the school. And if you can give me enough notice, I can be there for orientation when they start.”

“Okay,” Beth says, nodding, because that’s fair, even if it is unexpected, and Dean nods too, and it feels like - - like as much of a blessing as she ever could’ve hoped for. “We’re meeting with one next Thursday.”

Dean nods.

“Just text me the time and the place.”

When they settle again into silence, Beth takes one last deep inhale of the night air, before turning back towards the house.

“I’ll text you my new address for the drop off too,” she tells him, and Dean nods, watching her leave. She’s almost back to the house when Dean calls out behind her.

“Beth?”

“Yeah?”

“I really am glad that he makes you happy.”

She turns around then, looks at him again, and she’s surprised almost by the genuine look of care on his face. The fact that he has so rarely in their twenty years together meant anything that he’s said to her, but this? This he really seems to mean.

“Thanks,” she replies, then she pauses, looking at him. “If you want, I can show you the new house when you drop them off?”

“I’d like that,” he says. “And maybe in the holidays – when you drop them at South Haven instead of my mom’s, I can show you what I’ve done with grandpa’s place too?”

Beth smiles at him.

“I’d like that,” she echoes, and Dean gives her a tentative smile back.

*

By the time she’s packed the kids into Dean’s car, waved them off, called Judith to give her the heads up, and cleaned up the kitchen, Rio is well and truly gone. While she can’t exactly pretend that she’s surprised, it’s still enough to make her polish off another two glasses of whatever leftover spirits she has in her liquor cabinet, and press her forehead into the glass door of the shower, water pelting at her tight, exhausted shoulders as she does it.

Her exhaustion invites sleep quickly, but she finds herself restless, woken too often by every purr of spring-time breeze or the chatter of nighttime birds, until she’s woken one last time by the dip of the mattress below her, and a pair of arms slipping around her waist, pulling her back against a lean, firm chest.

Rio’s hands slip up beneath her pyjama shirt, stroking calloused fingers against the soft skin of her belly, and she blinks, only half awake, to see his knuckles still strapped with boxing tape, the bruises blossoming beneath like the season. Her breath hitching, her fingers trace gently down his arms to his hands, finding the edge of the tape, her nails lightly pulling at the sticky edge of it for a moment before feeling his forehead against her shoulder, and she can hear the apology he doesn’t say, and she brings his knuckles to her lips, and hopes he hears the one she can’t say too.


	3. Chapter 3

“And then what? He just left?” Annie asks, carrying the other end of the box out to the truck currently parked in Beth’s driveway, and Beth nods, shifting the weight on her own side. 

“He texted to tell me he’d gotten himself and the kids to his mom’s. They’re going to a thing at Judith’s social club today – it’s like a three-generation celebration thing? I don’t think Dean even really knew what it was. He said he’d email me any good photos of the kids though.” 

Humming a little in the back of her throat, Annie wrinkles up her nose, looking over at Beth as she walks backwards across the yard. A bee drifts by, hovering as if to see what they’re carrying – probably drawn by the scented candles from the living room packed into the box between them, and Annie yelps, high-kicking with one of her legs to get it away. 

“ _Annie_ ,” Beth groans, awkwardly stopping and then dodging the bee when it flits over her way. “Just leave it alone.” 

“I _am_ ,” Annie whines in reply, jerking the box back, closer towards her belly. She stumbles backwards, dragging Beth along with her, and at least it helps them to regain the pace. 

“So he’s going to do the school visits with you and gangfriend?” Annie asks after a second, and Beth blanches for a moment at the reminder, before she resigns herself to the truth, nodding over at her sister. She hasn’t told Rio that part of it yet, hadn’t wanted to in the gentle quiet of the morning, not when they’d both studiously avoided bringing up the night before as they’d pottered around the kitchen getting ready for the truck drop-off. 

“I mean, are you going to sell tickets?” Annie quips with a grin, and Beth glares at her over the box, finding a weird satisfaction when the back of Annie’s legs hit the open truck, making her yelp in surprise. Still, she recovers almost too quickly. 

“All I’m saying is I’d pay to see it,” Annie adds, shuffling sideways enough to drop her end of the box onto the back of the truck, letting Beth push it the rest of the way in. “Like, the most fucked up version of _Yours, Mine and Ours_ in the world.” 

And god, isn’t it? Beth cringes a little at the thought, getting her knee up onto the truck to get the box in as far back as it’ll go.

“I’m trying not to think about it,” Beth says truthfully, clambering awkwardly back out of the truck. “It’s not until next week anyway, and there’s plenty to do before then.” 

Annie makes a noise of agreement, but her gaze has drifted out to where Rio is carrying one of her armchairs out of the house, all on his own, the lines of his arms set almost loosely, like it weighs nothing at all, and Beth finds herself flush, especially when Ben bounds up to his side carrying an ottoman, talking Rio’s ear off about something or other. Sara and Harry coming up behind with a standing lamp and small box of Emma’s lower-tier stuffed animals respectfully (her favourites had gone with her in a suitcase to her grandma’s).

They’re making pretty good time considering, Beth thinks, pulling out her cell to check the time. The truck had been dropped off at six, and would need to be taken back to the company’s lot around four. In that time, they had to load it up, drive it halfway across town, and get all of her things into Rio’s storage unit. That had been an argument too. Or, not an argument exactly, just a _conversation_. Rio had wanted to hire somebody for the whole move – a company that would load up her furniture and her boxes, and unload them, leaving them free to have the day to themselves, but Beth had refused. Hiring the truck on its own had been less than half the price of hiring it with the labour, and besides. This way she’d know exactly where everything was. 

Plus the more give in her budget here, she reminds herself, the more there is to spend on the kids’ room and making them special. 

“Did I tell you about the new beds I ordered for the girls?” Beth says with a grin, thinking on it as she starts back towards the house, and Annie blinks back at her. 

“No more bunk beds?” 

“No more bunk beds,” Beth says. “These beds are so cute, you have no idea. Plus they have drawers underneath them, so they’re basically doing double duty as furniture.” 

“Cute,” Annie agrees, ruffling Ben's hair as they pass him on their way back into the house. Beth gives Rio a look out the corner of her eye too, and he meets it, smirking a little, like he knows exactly what she’s thinking, and Beth promptly quickly diverts her gaze. 

“Have you found a bed for you guys yet?” 

And that’s enough to make her sigh. 

“No,” she says. “I found a mattress I didn’t mind on sale at the Snooze Warehouse, but Rio veto’ed it.” 

To put it politely. 

To put it honestly, he’d just laughed, almost too loudly, before jokingly trying to take her purse so she wouldn’t leave the place with, and she quotes, _a mattress that could double for a body bag_. 

“You should just let him choose one,” Annie says. “You know he’d pick one that basically gave you a back massage every night.” 

Rolling her eyes, Beth runs a hand up the back of her neck, feeling the damp roots of her hair there. The day’s hotter than expected, the heat closing in around her like an unwelcomed hug, but she tries not to stew on it. At least it’s not raining, she reminds herself, before answering Annie. 

“It’s really not that simple.” 

“Well, what’s the bed like in his apartment?” 

Beth snorts, feeling a blush find her cheeks that she hopes the she might be able to pass off under the heat, before shaking her head. 

“I am not answering that.” 

“Why not?” 

At Beth’s look, Annie scoffs. 

“I’m not asking you what it’s like when he _rails_ you in it, B, I’m asking what it’s like to sleep in.” She squints, tone deliberately lowering. “Unless you don’t sleep in it.” 

Beth’s too pink for words, refusing to even dignify that with a response, when she’s rescued by Ruby and Stan heading past, awkwardly lugging the coffee table outside between them. 

“Why didn’t you book the removalists again?” Ruby asks with a whine, and Beth wrinkles her nose apologetically, opening her mouth to reply when her phone buzzes in the back pocket of her jeans. Pulling it out, she’s not sure what she’s expecting – maybe the kids, or Dean, or Judith. Either way, it’s definitely not the number of the dealership, flashing brightly up at her. 

“Sorry, I have to take this,” Beth says, stepping back and ignoring Ruby’s call of _everything okay, B?_ behind her and heading into the kitchen. 

And the conversation is quick at least – Shelley, the weekend manager Beth had hired, is overwhelmingly flustered, a customer from earlier in the week having come back in, unhappy with the car he’d bought, yelling profanities at her that Beth can hear over the phone, something about a bad battery – like they don’t test them before the sale – and god, Beth thinks, just what she needs, pinching the bridge of her nose. 

“I’ll be right there,” Beth says, and Shelley mumbles out a thanks. 

It takes her a moment to prepare herself, to think - - she needs to change, put on at least a bit of a face of make-up, to get herself together, and by the time she’s even been able to entertain the thought of moving forwards, there’s a hand on the small of her back, and Beth’s jerking around in fright before turning to find Rio behind her, his face easy and amused at having startled her. 

It’s not her fault he moves like a ghost. 

“Tryin’ to get out o’ packin’, ma?” 

Beth just gives him a look, and it’s really not fair, that he can look so rested. So _together_ when she really just feels like hell. 

“I wish. Drama at the dealership.” 

His face draws at that, his jaw rocks, and before he can assume the worst, she interjects.

“Not your department,” she says, lowering her voice and jutting out her chin in the way that he does it, and Rio gives her a look so unimpressed back, she almost laughs. “Seriously though, it’s a regular customer, not like, a crime customer. I’ll handle it.” 

She sighs, rubbing at her forehead as she starts to move towards the hallway. All her clothes are packed too, the only ones she has out are the ones in her suitcase for Rio’s – where she’s supposed to be going as soon as she drops the truck back. She exhales a long breath, walking forwards only to have Rio’s arm gently come up to stop her. 

“Where you wanna be?” he asks, and the question is so surprising, so sudden, that Beth just blinks back at him, reeling a little. 

“What?” 

Rio tilts his head, like this is a question that shouldn’t be that hard, but still. He’s patient with her. 

“You wanna be there, or you wanna be here?” When it’s clear she still doesn’t get what he’s saying, Rio exhales, something between a hoarse sound of annoyance and a laugh. After a moment, he shrugs, slowing his words down for her. “We partners, ain’t we? And you got a lot on your plate today, so I’ll go the place you don’t wanna go.” 

And the thing is - - she just - - she _laughs_ , surprised, uncertain, something, she has no idea, just suddenly, remarkably overwhelmed. She looks at him, trying to find any hint of a joke in a raised eyebrow or a mischievous glint to his eye, but there’s nothing but honesty there, and Beth finds herself rocking back on her heels, not quite able to take her eyes off him. 

“I think I want to be there,” she admits. “But I think I need to be here.” 

He nods, like it had been the answer he’d been expecting. Leaning forwards, he presses a quick, sharp kiss to her mouth that just about steals her breath, before taking a few steps away from her, pulling his car keys out of his pocket in the process. 

“I’ll go to the dealership then. Sort it out.” 

“Please don’t kill anyone,” she says, meaning to laugh, but she’s too tired to make the sound, and maybe it doesn’t matter, because he smirks like he hears it anyway, holding up his hands. 

“Only coz you asked so nice.” 

She rolls her eyes, but can’t quite hide the affection on her face, no matter how much she wants to as she watches him leave. 

He’s gone barely twenty minutes when two cars pull up, a few of his guys piling out to help pack up the truck, and Beth stores the fact that he thinks it takes four guys to replace him in the back of her head to tease him about later, but it really does help. They make surprisingly quick work of packing up the rest of the truck and moving the majority of her life to one of Rio’s (many) rented storage units. 

By the time she gets back from it, Stan’s taken Ben, Sara and Harry back to the Hills’ house, giving them a little privacy, and Annie and Ruby are sprawled out, exhausted, on her empty living room floor, sharing a bottle of champagne they must’ve picked up specifically for the occasion. Beth collapses down onto the floor beside them, looking at her empty house, and taking the plastic cup of bubbly as it’s offered. 

“This is weird,” Annie says, and Ruby promptly agrees, topping up Annie’s cup and then her own, before turning her attention onto Beth. 

“We were trying to work out before you got back how pregnant you were when you moved in.” 

“Five months with Danny,” Beth says, sipping on her champagne as Ruby lets out a low whistle. 

“And you’ve made two whole-ass humans since then.” 

“And one half-ass human,” Annie agrees, and at Beth and Ruby’s look, she rolls her eyes. “Because Danny was only half-made. Don’t act like it doesn’t make sense.” 

Beth snorts, and Annie grins, groaning as she clambers to her feet, bitching under her breath about needing to pee, but also Beth making this move as difficult as it could possibly be, and Beth doesn’t even grace it with a response (she’s not sure she has the brain function to right now anyway), just watching as her sister disappears out the room. 

It really is weird, Beth thinks, looking over the now bare walls, the polished floors, the open sort of flow she’d loved so much when they’d first moved in. The little circuit that had made the house feel alive from the moment the kids could toddle their way around it, and now? Now it just feels like any other place. The heart of it sleeping at their grandmother’s. 

There’d been a time when she really had thought her and Dean would live here until the kids grew up, maybe even until they retired, maybe even until one of them passed. She hadn’t thought much about it, but had only known the lived-in peace of the place she had thought no one would be able to take from them. A place she could make a home not only for her and the kids, but for Annie too. A home-base like they’d never had growing up. And she guesses it had been, for a while. 

Eight years. 

God, it wasn’t even really that long. 

“I was surprised, you know,” Ruby says suddenly beside her, and Beth blinks over, pulled from her thoughts. “He was really _here_ for you today. First with moving, then with work. He figured out what you needed and he came through.” 

Beth finds herself flushing a little at the thought, her gaze drifting down to the cup in her hands, thumbing at the condensation that builds at the side of her cup. She’d been surprised too, but then - - then she’d been almost annoyed at herself that she had been. It wasn’t fair to him. He’d been more helpful than not this entire process, and the thought settles somewhere deep and foreign in the cavern of her chest. 

And perhaps with more time, she’d be able to uncover it, to _know_ it, but then the front door is snapping open, and they both twist on the living room floor to see Rio hovering in the foyer, clocking them with a nod. He seems briefly uncertain, like he thinks he could be intruding, but Beth smiles at him, and he smiles back, before gesturing to her small suitcase and duffel bag propped against the front door.

“This it?” he asks, a hint of surprise in his tone, and Beth shrugs, feeling Ruby climb to her feet beside her, before turning around to offer Beth a hand. 

“It’s only a week,” Beth says, resisting the urge to groan as she gets up onto her aching legs. “How much did you think I’d need?” 

“Figured you’d need at least three of these for all your robes,” he says, nudging her suitcase with his foot, voice low and teasing, and Ruby barks on a laugh beside her. 

“He’s got your number, B,” she says, leaning in to give Beth a quick, one-armed hug. “On that note, I’m going to go home so that I can put _my_ robe on, and preferably not move for the rest of the week.” 

“That sounds like an incredible idea. And thank you,” Beth hums, and Ruby nods. 

“I’d say any time, but moving really sucks,” she says, and Beth laughs as Annie bounds back in from the bathroom. 

“Boo, are we leaving?” Annie asks with a pout, and Ruby nods again, watching as Annie fumbles in her purse for her keys. Stan had taken their car with the kids back to their place after all, so Annie was set to drive Ruby home and pick up Ben, before going home herself. 

“Get home safe,” Beth says, and Ruby gives Beth a pained look at the prospect of Annie’s driving, but says goodbye none the less, and then just like that, it’s just her and Rio again, alone. 

The house is almost too big like this, empty, never made for just two people, and it leaves a strange, hollow feel to the place. When she speaks, her words almost echo, and it just makes it seem less like home. She shakes her head, looking back at Rio. 

“Everything go okay at the dealership?” she asks, and Rio nods easily, laughing a little beneath his breath as he steps closer to her, his hands coming to rest on her hips.

“Don’t think I was who he was expectin’.” 

“Probably not,” she agrees, laughing softly herself. His hands trail around her hips, sliding down to her ass, grabbing a handful in each, and Beth sucks in a breath, unable to keep herself from pressing against him, her own hands reaching up to curl around his neck. 

“I am way too tired,” she tells him. “And I’m sweaty, and I smell, and I think I have aged about forty years since yesterday.” 

Nosing into her hair, he just holds her a little closer, dragging his lips across her temple, and god, how does that make her weak in the knees?

“Gotta send it off, don’t we?” he says, and Beth laughs, a little breathless as he pushes his thigh between her wobbly legs, flattening his chest (or, well, trying to) against hers, and Beth scrunches up her nose, thinking on it, but shakes her head. 

“No,” she decides, her hands stroking the back of his neck. “I think I’m done saying goodbye. Think I want to start saying my hellos.” 

At that, he pulls back a little, just enough that he can look down at her, and she blinks at the look of surprise that seems to flash across his face, but then he seems to settle into a deeper look, something complex and rich that curls up warm in her chest, as he nods. 

They just stand like that for a moment, lost in the look of each other when Beth hooks a finger in the neck of his t-shirt, pulling him down slightly towards her.

“Hey,” she says, and she waits until his gaze is fixed on hers to say, “Thank you.” 

Shrugging, he looks away from her, beyond her, to her empty house, to the kitchen where they met, and she wonders if he’s thinking about it, but finds she doesn’t want him to. Doesn’t want him thinking about their past when there feels like so much left ahead of them. So she says it again: 

“Hey.” 

And when he looks at her this time, she closes the distance between them to kiss him.

*

She wakes up to the smell of him.

His sheets, his bed, his apartment, just - - _him_ , chest flush against her back, his lips pressing into the back of her neck, his soft, half-asleep breaths disturbing her hair.

She’s still half-asleep herself, so when she rocks her hips back, pressing her ass into his crotch, it’s more instinct than anything else. It’s still enough to make him groan though, to push back against her, his hand hooking over her pyjama-clad thigh, bunching up the loose silk leg until the ankle-hem is almost at her knee. Beth tilts her head back, until the lips that were at the back of her head are dragging across her jaw, and it’s all it takes for him to surge forwards and kiss her. 

It’s so quick after that, the way he clambers up onto all fours, pulling her beneath him, the way he roughly tugs apart the buttons of her pyjama shirt, leaning into her to lay kisses down her chest, yanking off her pants, her panties, and god, she’s just - - she’s keening already, pushing up against him, desperate for every inch of him, and he’s shoving down his own underwear, his cock impossibly hard as he rocks against her, using her wetness to lubricate himself as he lines up to push into her, and - - 

“Daddy!”

The mattress dips with Marcus’ weight, and Beth almost topples off the bed with her urgency to make the situation in any way appropriate for tiny faces and wide eyes. She scrambles to close her top, suddenly immensely grateful that her pyjama pants are still hooked around her calves instead of complete off, yanking them back up as quickly and subtly as she can (which is to say: not very). 

At least she’s not the focus of Marcus’ attention, she thinks with an amused grin, Rio gritting his teeth as Marcus clambers onto his back, hooking his skinny arms around his father’s broad shoulders. 

“’Ey, pop,” Rio says, voice strained beneath the put-upon happiness, and Beth could almost cackle at the sheer mortification of the moment, but scoots down the bed instead, finding Rio’s underwear with her feet, and dragging them up the bed towards him. Rio gives her the most grateful look she thinks she’s _ever_ gotten from him, as he takes them from her quickly and slips them on under the sheets. “You up early.” 

“No, I’m not,” Marcus says with a giggle. “It’s almost nine.” 

And jeez, is it? Rio must be thinking the same thing if the way he cusses is anything to go by, and the swiftness with which he clambers out of bed, Marcus still hanging off his neck like a baby koala. Grabbing him by the wrists, Rio gently releases Marcus’ hold on him, lowering him down his back to the floor, and Marcus promptly runs back out of the room, babbling loudly about breakfast. 

It takes them both a moment to catch their breath, but when they do, Beth can’t quite help but laugh, even as Rio looks a little mournfully back at her, adjusting his underwear. He lets loose a hoarse exhale, rubbing a little at his neck where Marcus had been hanging (Beth can sympathise – those kids might be little, but they can wrench with the force of grown men sometimes). 

“I gotta go.” 

“Right,” Beth says, sitting up in the bed and rubbing a little at her face. Whose idea was it to have her bonding-time with Marcus the day after moving? The thought of getting out of Rio’s (and yes, _Annie_ , it is unfairly comfortable) bed at all today is enough to make her want to blow her brains out, no matter how genuinely excited (and a little nervous, she’s not going to lie) she is at the day she’d planned for Marcus. And right, she thinks, perking up a little and trying to take her mind off the naked want for his father still making itself known between her legs. This plan starts with breakfast. 

Throwing back the covers, Beth smooths her silk pyjama pants back down her legs, double-checks her buttons before getting up. 

“Where were you going this morning again?” she asks, wandering to where her suitcase is propped against the corner wall, unzipping it and tugging out her red, floral robe.

“Just a meetin’.” 

Beth blinks over at him, racking her head for any prior mention of this meeting, and coming up with nothing. She squints a little as she ties her robe, watching him grab a black t-shirt from the shelves in his closet, clean underwear, a pair of jeans. 

“Should I be there?” 

“Nah, ain’t your department,” he tells her, echoing her, echoing him yesterday, and Beth rolls her eyes. 

“I hate it when you say that.” 

He just throws a smirk over to her as he walks into the en suite, closing the door behind him, and Beth glances out of the bedroom to where Marcus is reading a book on Rio’s obscenely expensive leather couch, and figures she has another couple of minutes. 

“Can you at least tell me where you’re meeting?” she asks him through the door, lowering her voice. “So I know where to send the search and rescue team if you don’t come home?” 

He doesn’t answer that, which she can’t say is exactly a surprise, but he does make a strange little noise, something husky and a little bit guttural, and Beth - - 

Beth blinks. 

Hard. 

“Are you _masturbating_?” she hisses, scandalised, and Rio laughs breathlessly through the door. 

“Jeez, ma, save the Mrs. Brady act for when we got more time, yeah?” 

Rolling her eyes (because of course he wants to defile Mrs. Brady), Beth finds herself wandering a little closer towards the closed door. She shifts her weight, thinking about just opening it, but knowing Rio, that could really go either way. Instead, she turns, letting her back hit the wall beside the door, frowning a little as she plays with the tie on her robe. 

“Can I help?” 

“Nuh,” he says, and Beth frowns. Almost as if he hears her, he adds: “Need it to be quick.” 

Beth blinks, looking sideways at the door, her forehead furrowing. 

“And I don’t make it quick?” 

“I never want it quick wit’ you,” he tells her through the door. “It’s a problem, and I got places to be. Don’t worry though, I’m thinkin’ o’ you.”

“Yeah?” she asks, unable to stop the grin spreading across her face. Her thighs clench a little, but nothing dramatic – more flattered than turned on when she can’t see him like this. 

“Yeah,” he says, then adds: “Remember that dress you wore to Danny’s class picnic? We had that meetin’ after. Every time the wind blew up I could almost see your panties. Such a fuckin’ tease.”

He groans, and Beth is almost purple with how much she’s blushing. Still, she can’t quite help pushing. 

“Didn’t realise you liked it so much,” she says, and Rio huffs out a laugh. 

“Like what’s underneath it,” he replies, and Beth bites her lip, thinking about it. It feels like so long ago now, even though it was probably less than a year back – they were back in business together, but things were still tense, uneasy between them, and he’d surprised her that day, grinning at her from across the playground right before she gave her PTA fundraising speech. She’d been terrified of what he might do and furious, and - - 

Well. 

“I like it too. We weren’t even screwing again yet, but the second I saw you I thought about lifting it up, getting your hands on my legs, like in the bathroom. There was no bathroom there though, not one I would’ve gone in. Nowhere outside really at all. We’d have to have found somewhere outside then, out of view.” 

His breath hitches, and Beth slides slightly closer to the door, wondering what he looks like right now, if he’s pressed back against the shower door or - - or maybe the wall behind her, so they’re back to back, his hand on his cock, getting off to a memory of her, the her right now helping him along with it. 

“I thought about how easy it would be to push my panties aside and let you in,” and now she’s a little breathless herself, the heat she’d kept at bay sinking lower again, spreading from her belly to her cunt, clenching tight. “Your fingers, or your tongue, or your - -” she stumbles a little, half because the word really does still embarrass her, and half because she knows that Rio loves that it does. “Your cock. I wouldn’t care. As long as it was you.” 

It’s not long then, before she can hear his shuttered breath, and then the quiet, and then the sound of the shower faucet switching on. Beth figures there’ll be time for herself later, so wills down the leftover arousal, smoothing herself out instead and heading into the kitchen to make breakfast. 

She’s barely pulled out the eggs, milk and butter from Rio’s ridiculously well-organised fridge when Marcus appears beside her, his eyes wide as he peers up over the counter to where Beth is laying out the ingredients. 

“What are you making?” he asks, and Beth grins down at him. He’s still in his pyjamas, just like she is, a two-piece set, just like hers, although his are cotton, with yawning lions (sleeping lions, she gets the joke) all over them, and she almost laughs at the thought of her at least being able to outnumber Rio on that front (even getting him to wear underwear in bed is a challenge). 

“ _We_ are making crepes. Have you had crepes before?” 

Marcus nods, and Beth crouches down in front of him. 

“Is it okay if I pick you up?” 

Marcus nods again, and Beth grabs him beneath the arms, sitting him up on one of the stools at Rio’s kitchen island, making him comfortable before she moves to get the flour, sugar and salt from the pantry, and then a bowl, jug and saucepan from Rio’s various cabinets, trying not to think too hard that not a single piece of it seems to have been packed. 

“My tia makes yuck ones,” Marcus chimes in, matter of fact, pulling an egg from the carton and instantly launching into a game of finger soccer on the kitchen island with it. Somehow managing to resist the urge to pluck it from in front of him lest it smash on the floor, Beth instead focuses on setting up for breakfast. 

“Well,” she says with a grin. “We are not going to be making yuck ones. We are going to be making Nutella and banana crepes.” 

She does have to grab the rolling egg then, because Marcus’ attention has diverted to her so quickly, his eyes brightening so earnestly, that Beth can’t quite help but grin. 

“So, what do you say?” she asks. “Can you give me a hand?” 

It’s easy after that, Marcus warming up quickly, chattering away about school and friends and his cousins (and god, how many does he have? She vaguely knows Rio has sisters, but beyond that her knowledge of Rio’s family really extends to this apartment right now), and he’s surprisingly good at cracking the eggs, and even better at whisking them in with the milk (sure, he makes a bit of a mess, but when does cooking with kids _not_ make a mess?) 

“You didn’t learn this from your dad,” she tells him knowingly, and Marcus immediately cracks up, like he’s already learnt just how terrible Rio is at cooking, a fact that will never not make her preen smugly with her own talents around the kitchen. 

“Noooo,” Marcus says, still giggling. “Tia Carmen says he’s no good, and mommy says he only knows how to make onnne thing,” the tone his voice takes with that indicates an impression of a woman Beth doesn’t know, but she tries not to let it cross her face as she adds the butter to Marcus’ jug and he keeps whisking. “A big ol’ mess.” 

Beth laughs at that, because god, if she doesn’t know it. He’s never even tried to cook for her, but even the few times she’d wrangled him to help her – usually when she was swamped with PTA commitments, and Rio had been insisting on more drops and meetings and money commitments – he’d managed to burn or split or curdle something. It had had the added benefit of frazzling and frustrating him in a way she’d never seen before, which had been both entertaining and weirdly disconcerting, especially since Beth thinks nothing makes her more at peace than cooking. 

While Marcus finishes his whisking, Beth makes quick work of preparing the dry ingredients, then getting Marcus to pour the contents of the jug slowly into the bowl. She stirs, folding it until it forms a watery batter and moves to put it in the fridge. 

“It’s got to sit for twenty minutes,” she tells him. “And then we’ll be in Nutella heaven.” 

Marcus grins up at her, scooting on his seat in excitement, and Beth smiles in reply, starting to put away the dry ingredients as they wait. 

“Do you like cooking?” she asks him over her shoulder, and Marcus nods. 

“I help mommy all the time. She’s really good. So’s Tia Carmen.” 

“Was she the one who made the yucky crepes?” Beth asks, and Marcus looks up at her, eyes wide and mouth open, briefly scandalised at the prospect. 

“Nuh-uh. That was Tia Aida. She’s like daddy. No good.” 

“What am I no good at?” 

They turn in unison to find where Rio has appeared miraculously on the other side of the kitchen island, as stealthily as a spectre, but Beth isn’t entirely sure why that would surprise her. She can’t help the way her gaze drifts down his well-toned chest, visible below his thin, black t-shirt, and the fit of his jeans, low on his sharp hips, before she catches herself, grateful briefly that Rio is too distracted staring at Marcus to pay her the attention. 

If she’s a picture of coolness, poor Marcus looks _sprung_ , his face briefly horrified at the realisation his father heard him, before Rio arches a pointed eyebrow and Marcus instantly bursts into a fit of giggles.

“This disrespect,” Rio says, all faux-outrage, as he grabs Marcus by the arms, pulling him off the chair and dangling him briefly in the air before tossing him up to catch him against his chest, wrapping his arm under Marcus’ legs to hold him, tickling into his side with his free hand. 

“You talk about your old man like that?” 

Marcus is hiccupping around his giggles now, forehead dropped against Rio’s shoulder, breathless with joy, and Beth’s toes curl in the best way, her eyes watching the slope of Rio’s nose as he fake-bites and then kisses Marcus’ cheek, settling him back down on the chair. He ducks around the island, giving Beth’s cheek the same treatment (although she suspects the bite is a little harder, the kiss a little softer), just to make Marcus laugh again, which all in all makes Beth blush. 

“Crepes will be ready in a few if you want to stick around,” she says, but Rio just shakes his head. 

“Ain’t got time, ma.” 

Darting back over to Marcus, he ruffles his hair before tilting his chin up at him. 

“You gonna keep Miss Elizabeth out o’ trouble, pop?” 

Marcus’ expression draws serious and solemn, saluting his dad as he starts to move towards the door. 

“Yessir!” Marcus yells, and Rio looks back at him, face drawn and serious in a way that briefly makes Beth stand up a little taller.

“Do your best. It’s a real hard job,” Rio warns, and right, Beth thinks, shoulders dropping again, and she gives him a look as Rio flashes her a quick, shit-eating grin before waving them both goodbye.

*

After breakfast, Beth gets them both changed, fixing herself up as best she can while trying to keep Marcus’ energetic little form in her line of vision. She settles on a pair of jeans and one of her more relaxed floral blouses, while getting him dressed in his own set of jeans and a mint green t-shirt covered in crocodiles that he enthusiastically requests.

The morning passes mostly in a blur, and she requires more than a few coffees to ward off the exhaustion of the move, but Marcus seems to love the day she’d planned – the crepes, then a trip to the batting cages, followed by a stopover at the children’s bookstore off Hurst Street. In the time of it all, Beth learns that Marcus is whip smart, polite, easily confident, and basically destined to break a few hearts when he gets older. His favourite types of books involve either dragons or treehouses (Andy Griffiths _The 13-Storey Treehouse_ series being an absolute favourite, namely for its inclusion of both – a fact she stores away for decorating his bedroom), his favourite type of sport is whatever he’s playing at that exact moment, and his favourite toy is his Optimus Prime figurine, mostly because it’s actually, technically, _two toys_ not just one. 

He also has a voracious appetite for what Beth can only describe as _seeing things to completion_ – from planting tomato seeds with his abuela, watching the plant grow, harvesting it and eating it, to winter being his favourite season because it means the year has finished, to writing his way to the very last page of a notebook. 

What can Beth say? She’s totally charmed. 

Like there was ever any doubt. 

They’ve settled in at the last stop on her planned outing – an old-school ice cream parlour that Ruby had recommended, and they’re each eating their way through their own ice cream cones (triple chocolate fudge for him, honey and macadamia nut for her), when Beth finally decides to address the elephant in the room. 

“So,” she asks casually. “Are you excited to move house?” 

“Yup,” Marcus hums, ice cream smeared thick around his mouth as he eats, and Beth waits for him to elaborate. When he doesn’t, she sits back in her seat, trying to think of a different approach that doesn’t involve a borderline interrogation. What was it Annie had said? _Just be chill_. 

(“I mean, look at me and Dakota,” Annie had said, gesturing with her cup of vodka. “Easy breezy, Bethie Gabreathy.” 

“I don’t know what you just said,” Beth had told her, still packing at the time. “Also doesn’t Dakota try to eat your hair whenever you see him?” 

“Yeah, but only because he knows I’m chill.”) 

“You’re getting lots of new kids to play with,” Beth says now, and Marcus’ expression doesn’t change, still utterly content with inhaling his ice cream, his legs swinging loosely underneath him. And ugh, she’s embarrassing. Can feel it in herself, the need for Marcus to validate the move – to want it as much as she does. She tucks her hair behind her ear, and she’s still thinking of what else to say when suddenly Marcus asks: 

“Are we a family now?” 

The words are so sudden, so at odds with his posture, but when she looks at him, his face looks alert, and almost a little serious, and god, he looks so much like his father in the moment that Beth has to catch her breath. 

“Would you like us to be?” she asks carefully, and Marcus looks at her, seeming to take her in, his chocolate smeared face like a little deciding fate. 

“Yep,” he decides authoritatively, re-directing his attention to his ice cream, but not before adding. “You make daddy come home more, and you make him laugh a whole lot.” 

Beth’s not sure what to say to that, but Marcus, once again, doesn’t really give her the chance to respond. 

“He used to make mommy sad,” he says, and there’s something in his tone that she hasn’t heard before, something - - something almost ashamed. He shrugs, not looking at her, the swinging of his legs slowed to a weak paddle. 

“He makes me happy,” Marcus tells her, almost conspiratorially. “But he makes a lot of other people really - -” and he looks away from her then. “Not happy,” he settles on, and Beth blinks at him, opening her mouth to reply, but the moment seems to pass, Marcus’ legs starting to swing again, his teeth munching into the cone, getting chocolate on the tip of his nose, and Beth grabs her purse out of pure habit, pulling out a wet wipe.

Shuffling closer to him on the bench, she wipes his face off, and he grimaces at the smell of the wipe, at the cool touch of it, but lets her do what she needs to without complaint. She’s still wiping chocolate from his forehead (how did it even get there?) when she leans forwards, the moment suddenly feeling pressing, the honesty urgent, pushing behind her teeth, begging for release. 

“Can you keep a secret?” she asks him, and Marcus looks up, eyes wide at the prospect of being brought in on something, and Beth just smiles. 

“Your daddy makes me happy too,” she tells him, and it takes Marcus a minute to react, but when he does, it’s with the type of wide, honest grin she thinks could stop traffic, and it’s the pride in it that gets her, the pride in his father, at making her happy, and it just connects them somehow, instantly, in the moment of it. 

And then the words are out of her mouth before she can even think on them. 

“You want to come see our new house again? Just you and me?” 

Marcus glows.

*

Marcus is still chattering in his car seat about _Transformers_ when Beth slows pulling in towards the new house, her back straightening as she clocks the two vans, and at least three cars parked in her driveway. It’s probably the former owners finalising things, Beth tells herself, her minivan crawling past the house, and she’s about to apologise to Marcus and head back to Rio’s apartment when she recognises Rio’s car amongst the fray, parked tightly back against the house to leave room for the others.

Beth blinks, hard, pulling the car to a stop on the road outside. 

“Is there a party?” Marcus asks behind her, face lighting up at the prospect, and Beth glances back at him, biting the inside of her cheek and thinking about how to proceed. In the end, all thoughts are stopped by the front door of the house opening and the unmistakable form of Demon heading out to meet her. 

And right, Beth thinks, feeling a spark of anger flare in her gut. 

This is how this is going to go. 

“Would you mind waiting here for a second, honey?” 

Marcus shrugs, turning his attention back to the robot figurine in his hands, and Beth slips out of the driver’s seat, rounding the hood of the car to meet Demon. Over his shoulder, she sees someone open up the side of one of the vans, pulling a large circle of wire out and marching it up towards the house. 

She opens her mouth to Demon, but finds no words come out, gesturing over towards the van in question, hoping it’s enough, and Demon follows her hands, before looking back at her, his face carefully neutral. 

“The new security system’s going in today.” 

And Beth blinks at him. 

“Okay,” she says slowly. “And Rio’s overseeing it?” 

Demon nods, and Beth bites her lip, glancing over at the van in the distance. It’s fine, is the issue. She figured Rio would want a security system in place before they moved in, it doesn’t bother her, but - - it seems like a weird thing to _keep_ from her. Doubt and suspicion immediately plague her mind, weighing down her head, and she tries to keep her expression light as she flicks her gaze back to Demon. 

“Seems a bit below his pay grade,” she says, almost joking, leaving it as open-ended as possible, and Demon just shrugs. 

“You know Rio,” he says vaguely, and Beth squints a bit, waiting for any sort of elaboration, but none of it comes. 

“Well, I told Marcus he could have a look at the house again,” Beth says, probing, and Demon not only shrugs, but heads around the side of the car, rapping his knuckles against the window, and grinning through it at Marcus’s yelp of delight. It’s not long before Demon’s pulling Marcus from the van, the two having a quick hug before he drops Marcus to the ground, letting him bolt forwards until Beth has to call him back to hold her hand. 

And none of this is serious, Beth reminds herself, walking up the path and then the front steps, Marcus’ little hand clasped firm in her own. A security system is a good thing. Having it in before they move all their things in is _also_ a good thing, but still. She can’t help the feeling of anxiousness winding her tighter, the thought that he had _deliberately kept it from her_ sitting like a stone in her gut. 

Stepping into the foyer, Marcus _ooos_ at the scene before him. There has to be a team of four or five guys, some hovering on the top rungs of ladders, drilling wires up into the ceiling, hanging little contraptions that Beth can’t even begin to name. Another stands at the top of the stairs, calling down at somebody for another camera, and there must be a look on Beth’s face, because suddenly one of the guys on one of the ladders stops, laughing not-unkindly down at her. 

“You look like you’re lost,” he calls with a grin, climbing down off the ladder and almost springing off the bottom rung. He’s got the look of any other sort of handy-man – a few years older than her, a light paunch at his gut, white, with salt and pepper hair. The only difference is that beneath his black polo-shirt is a distinctive tattooed sleeve of serpents and pin-up girls, most of which, even in Beth’s limited experience, seem pretty poorly done. He makes his way over to her in a few easy steps, holding out a hand. 

“I’m Cal.” 

And it takes her a moment to remember where she’s heard the name before, _how_ she’s heard it, but then just as quickly she’s back in that office with Rio, arguing over wallpaper, Demon in the doorway saying Cal was booked and Rio telling her what he’d been booked for was none of her concern. That he’d been hired for security. That Rio had _told_ her in the exact same breath that he _hadn’t_. Beth stands up a little straighter, the anger sparking hot in her belly. 

“Beth,” she replies, a little too sweetly, taking his hand, and he smiles at her, briefly looking her over in surprise, eyes lingering on her chest, before catching himself and diverting his gaze. 

“Nice to finally meet the lady of the house,” he says, tone shifting from mildly flirtatious to distantly respectful, and it’s enough to make Beth frown. “Want me to take you through what I’m doing, or has the boss already done that?” 

It takes her a moment to realise that he means _Rio_ , and Beth feels her gaze shift unblinkingly back at him, slipping on her best Stepford Wife smile in the process. She glances back, sees Demon coming up behind her, his own face still carefully neutral, and Beth leans down to Marcus. 

“Want to hang out with Mr. Demon for a bit?” she says, and god, that’s not a phrase she thought she’d ever be saying, but Marcus just gives her a toothy grin before darting off to launch himself at Demon. It’s enough to make Demon look quickly back at her, a look passing across his face like he knows exactly what she’s doing, and Beth meets it, challenging him to do anything about it, and the expression on her own face must be the right sort of furious, because she sees it, the moment Demon resigns himself to exactly which boss he’s going to piss off today.

Spinning on the spot, Beth turns back to Cal, holding her arms up, gesturing forwards. 

“Lead the way,” she says, and Cal grabs his iPad off the top of one of the boxes, happily walking her through all of it – the cameras, both inside and out that they can monitor from their phones, the wireless motion sensors, the electromagnetic locks and the bio-scanners he’s going to set up, the bullet-resistant doors (“Don’t worry, our contact has made sure they look just like the ones you had here already. No one will know the difference”). Just. 

Through _all of it_. 

She’s not sure how long it takes, but by the end, she’s sure the colour has drained from her face, her forehead creased, her lips parted, and Cal laughs again as he comes to a stop beside her. 

“You look a little overwhelmed,” he says, his voice light, and Beth wobbles a little on the spot, can feel all the exhaustion of the week suddenly being toppled by the weight of - - of _this_ , whatever it is. She sucks in a shaky breath, pushing her hair back behind her ears.

“It’s a lot,” she replies, and Cal laughs again. 

“For more than half a million dollars, you’d sure hope so.” 

Diverting his attention back down to his iPad, he closes the specs for their house, loading up his emails and typing something rapidly in instead, and Beth just - - she just stares at him. It takes her a moment to find her voice, to scrounge it up from where it seems to have sunk somewhere between her chest and her toes. 

“I’m sorry, what?” Beth asks, her voice a little high once she finds it, and Cal looks briefly surprised back up at her, before he covers it. His face returning to that easy, salesman smile. 

“It’s a top of the line security system. Short of a round-the-clock team of bodyguards, this thing is going to be keeping you safer than a nun’s cu - - as anything.” 

“For half a million dollars,” she repeats, her voice dry and cold, and Cal visibly flinches at it, his expression suddenly growing riddled, like he’s realised that he’s messed something up, and Beth steps easily back. “Thank you for your time, Cal, now if you’ll excuse me.”

With that, she’s turning on her heel, striding away from Cal and doing a lap of the ground floor. When all she finds are more of the security installation team and Marcus and Demon (who she shoots her calmest, sweetest grin to), she quickens her step up the stairs and heads straight for their bedroom. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise, she thinks in hindsight, to see him propped there at a portable desk someone’s brought in for him, set up at his laptop, plugging his ear with a finger to curb the background noise as he talks on the phone to someone, and Beth pauses in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe, trying to keep her expression neutral as white hot fury sparks in her gut. 

Rio clocks her expression almost instantly, and he must’ve heard her downstairs – hell, she’s _sure_ that he sent Demon out to greet her, and the knowledge of that only makes her that much angrier. He seems to pick up on that too, her own anger sparking his, his jaw rocking as he ends the call. They stand there in silence for a minute, until Beth breaks it. 

“Were you going to tell me?” she asks, and Rio looks past her shoulder, before his gaze flicks back to her. 

“Where’s pop?” 

“Downstairs with Demon. Were you ever going to tell me?” 

Rio just looks at her then, curling his lips in as he seems to work out how he wants to proceed. In the end, he just shakes his head, not looking the least bit sorry. It’s enough to make her step forwards into the room, her expression twisting desperately, the heat in her chest holding her briefly hostage. 

“Half a million dollars, Rio,” Beth hisses when she finds the words, her face drawn, and Rio shoves his tongue into the side of his mouth, his gaze pissed off right back at her, and it’s all Beth can do to try and ground herself. “I can’t afford that.” 

“I ain’t askin’ you to,” he replies, like it’s that easy, and Beth glares at him. 

“I can’t live in a house that I can’t afford again, we talked about this -- ” 

“And you ain’t,” Rio says. “We bought the house in your budget.” 

“Then what’s this?” 

She gestures broadly around herself, then down to the new, tiny dome on the wall by their bedroom door – what she now knows, thanks to Cal, is a motion sensor. 

“A security system,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, like it was what she was asking, and Beth grits her teeth. 

“No,” she insists. “We _did_ talk about this. We talked about it with the budget for the house, with the bed - - and you _knew_ this would - -” she catches her breath, tries to ground herself again. “There’s a reason you didn’t tell me about this.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Because I didn’t want none of your bitch ass drama when I’m payin’ these guys by the hour, so –”

And he flicks his hand out then, a clear dismissal, as he turns his attention back to his laptop, and Beth just sees red. 

“Maybe you wouldn’t have any of my _bitch ass drama_ if you were honest with me about what hiring Cal meant in the first place.” 

“Bull. You never woulda gone wit’ this.” 

“Because it’s _too much money_.”

“It ain’t for me!” He almost yells it at her, his voice hoarse, but as soon as the words leave his mouth, he sits back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tries to collect himself. When he speaks again, his tone is firm, but calmer. “I let you decide how much we spent on the house. I let you decide what we spend on the shit inside it. On the fuckin’ _themes_ you don’t think I know you still doin’. I let you do all the dumb shit you insist on doin’ on your own. This? _I decide_.” 

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Beth feels herself straightening, pulling tauter, tighter, righteous fury sparking in her gut. 

“You _let_ me?” she hisses. “You do not _let_ me do things and you don’t _decide things_ for me or for us.”

He scoffs, like he disagrees, and Beth’s skin feels hot to the touch, her body raw, her throat aching with every breath.

“You’re an asshole,” she tells him, her hands shaking. “And you tell me I spend money on things we don’t need, when you go out and spend half a - - ” 

But he cuts her off before she can get any further. 

“Yeah, I am an asshole, darlin’, but see, I know what I am. How many times I gotta remind you what you are? You make and move fake cash, you deal drugs and you shackin’ up with a gangbanger, so maybe leave the Mrs. Brady act in the bedroom, yeah? Coz I’m droppin’ half a mil on a security system because you and me? _We need it_ , and we need it a helluva lot more than Danny needs fuckin’ dinosaur wallpaper.” 

Beth blinks back wide eyed at him, and she knows her eyes are glassy, can feel the tears building even before she blinks, even before she feels them catch wet in her lashes, but he doesn’t so much as quiver in return. And there’s so much she wants to say, so much that she _needs_ to, but suddenly everything feels too hot, and too cold, and just - - she is _so tired_. 

“I’m going to stay at Annie’s tonight,” she says, instead of anything else, and Rio scoffs, sucking in his cheeks briefly before he looks back down at his laptop, his fingers working slowly over the keys. 

“Fine. Leave Marcus here. I’ll take him to his mom’s when I go.”

And of course, Marcus. Beth exhales a shaky breath, remembering what he’d told her only an hour ago at the ice cream parlour, and suddenly feels a pit of shame plant in her belly, her fingers curling at her sides, and she wants to say something - - what, she doesn’t know, but Rio doesn’t so much as look back up at her, and so Beth leaves without another word.

*

“And then what happened?”

“I said goodbye to Marcus and I left,” Beth says with a sigh, rubbing her aching neck as she reaches for the bottle of vodka on Annie’s coffee table. She purposefully leaves out the part where she’d driven a few blocks over and then cried in her car for the better part of twenty minutes, the weeks catching up with her and flattening her exhaustion into a playground for all her ugliest emotions – all her guilt, and embarrassment, and insecurity, and pride, and her fear. She flops back onto the couch, sipping numbly at her drink, and Annie shakes her head, lets loose a half-hearted, “Damn,” but is otherwise silent. 

It’s enough to make Beth sit up a little straighter, to look over at Annie from above the rim of her glass. 

“That’s all you’re going to say?” Beth says, her lips pulling thin, annoyed, and Annie avoids her gaze as she slips up off the couch, grabbing their finished dinner plates to scrub up in her tiny kitchen. “He _deliberately_ kept it from me. He basically _lied_ to me.” 

_Just like Dean would_ , she wants to add, but the thought churns too uncomfortably in her belly, and she hates that even in her tired, furious state, she still finds herself defensively separating the two. Rio’s nothing like Dean, and this lie is like nothing Dean would lie about – hell, it’s not _exactly_ a lie at all, just not a clear truth, she knows that, but still.

There’s a deceit in it that hurts.

There’s maybe a naivety in it on her part that hurts more. 

Beth sighs, taking another sip of her drink. 

It takes her a minute to look back up at Annie, expecting her sister to be getting them more alcohol, or even trying to coax Beth into smoking some of her weed to calm down her frayed nerves (like Beth would ever take her up on it). What she doesn’t expect is to see her little sister filling the sink with soapy water, making neat, slow work of washing up their few dinner dishes, and Beth clambers achingly up off the couch to help, only to stop when Annie rolls her eyes, gesturing her to sit back down. 

After that, they’re both quiet for a minute, the only sound the slosh of water as Annie washes up and the just-audible ones of Ben on the phone to a friend from school in his room, and Beth’s half of a mind to go to sleep when Annie’s voice, somehow both tentative and exhausted, cuts through her thoughts. 

“Look, it’s totally not a criticism or whatever, but I kind of feel like you’ve come to me, and not Ruby, because you want some blind agreement right now, and I get that, but I just. I don’t think I can give it to you.” 

Her brow furrowing in surprise, Beth splutters a little, ready to say that she never wants blind agreement, would never even think to ask for it, but her words dry up on her tongue as Annie diverts her attention back to the task at hand, arms elbow-deep in the sink as she washes the dishes, and god, when did this reversal happen? 

“You want me to be mad at him about this, and I’m not,” Annie adds finally, her voice suddenly thick in a way that makes Beth sit up a little straighter. “Yeah, it’s messed up that he didn’t talk to you about it, but come on, Beth. He obviously didn’t tell you because he knew you’d react like this. Me and Ruby were saying it to you the other day. You think you’ve got to do everything yourself, and you think anyone doing anything for you is like, a debt you’re deepening, but that’s not how relationships work. I mean. It kind of was with Rio at the start, so I get where those issues have come from with him, and that’s not even starting on all your Dean-shaped baggage or even your mom-shaped baggage, but it’s not where you are anymore. It’s not where you’ve been for a while now. He’s obviously in it with you, y’know?”

Beth blinks, looking down at her drink, playing a little with her straw, her own lip quivering, as she says, “I have been lied to _so much_ , Annie, I - -”

“Yeah, and you need to talk to him about that. But he’s not Dean,” Annie interrupts. “Dean lied for Dean. Dean lied to cover up all the ways he shit the bed, and he shit the bed on like, every level. Comforter, sheets, mattress protector, mattress. Bed frame. Floor underneath. I mean, was there a single inch of your marital bed that wasn’t brown by the end of it all?”

Beth gives Annie a look at that, and Annie laughs to herself, waving soapy arms out and letting the suds drift to the floor. 

“With Rio, I think he was - -” and her voice cracks then, her bottom lip wobbling, and she looks briefly away, trying to pull herself together. It takes her a minute to collect herself, to figure out what it is that she wants to say, and when she does, her voice is somehow both raw and firm. 

“You’re asking me to be mad that he’s trying to keep you safe, and that’s never going to be something that makes me mad.” 

It takes Annie a moment to meet her gaze again, and when she does, her jaw is fixed, even as her lip still wobbles, a tear – blackened with mascara – having stolen down her cheek, catching at the curve of her nose, and - - 

And just - - 

Dammit.

*

It’s almost two in the morning when she knocks on his apartment door.

She hadn’t gone back to Rio’s to collect her things between leaving the new house and going to Annie’s, and had been enough of a mess at Annie’s that her sister had given her a pair of her oldest sweatpants that Beth had had to fight to pull over the swell of her ass and finished about two inches above her ankles, as well as one of Greg’s old t-shirts that Annie had claimed and cut a weird, deep v-neck into that shows off more of Beth’s blue lace bra than it doesn’t. 

She wishes she’d changed back into her jeans and blouse, but hadn’t wanted to wake Annie, and even beside that - - as soon as she’d decided to come back, she’d just wanted to _be there_. To see him. To be _with him_. She adjusts the strap of her purse, contemplating leaving when the door pulls open and Rio stands in front of her. 

He’s still in the jeans he’d tugged on that morning, but his shirt is off, and Beth flushes slightly at the sight, pointedly only meeting his eyes as she tilts her chin up towards him. He gives her a once over, lips very almost tugging into a grin, but he covers it before she can read into it, instead offering a: 

“Your sister piss you off too?” with his eyebrows raised, faux innocent, and Beth rolls her eyes, ducking beneath his arm and stepping back into his apartment, toeing off her flats in the process. 

“You’re not wrong about the security system,” Beth says in lieu of hello (he hadn’t said it either, after all), straightening herself up, the speech she’d prepared in the Lyft on her way over rolling out in her head. Rip it off like a bandaid, she reminds herself, spinning on her toes to watch him close the front door behind her. “It had not occurred to me, which was an oversight, and I’m glad it had occurred to you, and I’ll pay you back. I’ll need an exact figure, of course, but once I have it, I’ll - - I’ll get it organised.” 

As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she feels better, already knowing that Beth’s acceptance of the security system will have made Annie feel better too. It comes with the added bonus of making her feel like she’s regained control. She’s owed Rio before, that much isn’t a big deal, and she feels herself square off, happier than she’s felt since pulling up to the house, as Rio turns and she meets his gaze again, only - - only Rio seems to be looking at her like he’s just had something confirmed for him, and the thought pushes Beth a little off kilter. 

After a moment, he shakes his head. 

“Nah, we ain’t doin’ that.” 

“Aren’t doing what?” Beth asks, finding annoyance sparking quickly in her gut again. She doesn’t take her eyes off Rio as he strides back towards his dining room table to where his laptop is open, a moat of paperwork sprawled ominously around it. He sits down again, but doesn’t quite take his gaze off her. 

“We’re fifty-fifty, yeah? Partners?” he asks, and Beth blinks, surprised, and she nods cautiously. He returns her nod, face drawing so seriously it veers into being a little patronising and right, she realises, her gut tightening. He’s still pissed. “Yeah, see, that don’t mean we’re splittin’ everything halfway all the time. I got things that are my department, you got things that are yours.” 

The words are enough to make Beth scoff back at him, an old, raw nerve hit again, and dropping her hands to her hips, she scowls. 

“Right, so security and being a _big man_ is yours, and what? Mine is making animal-faced sandwiches for the kids? Cleaning? Putting together their rooms?” 

“Did I say that?” he asks, visibly annoyed, and Beth clenches her jaw. 

“I know security systems,” he says, accentuating the point. “I know what good one’s cost. I’ve needed ‘em a lot longer than you have, and I’ve gotten into your old place enough times to know you don’t know jack about ‘em. I ain’t lettin’ anybody we don’t want in there around the kids, yeah? I ain’t lettin’ anybody we don’t want in there around _you_.” 

And maybe it’s the look on his face, or the slight softening in his voice when he’d said _you_ , but Beth shifts her weight, her feet curling slightly in, her fingers playing in the rough hem of Greg’s t-shirt, and she just - - she’s really _tired_. 

“It’s a lot of money,” she says quietly, and Rio just huffs out a laugh. 

“How much your kids worth to you?” 

There’s a sharpness in it that makes Beth’s head snap up, her gaze fix on his, where he’s staring unblinking back at her, his face deceptively content for the annoyance in his voice and the acid in his words. Beth sucks in a sharp breath. 

“That’s not fair.” 

“Why not?” 

And Beth just stares at him, fumbles for the words, while Rio just watches her, his expression not shifting, and the apartment feels too quiet, and she realises it’s the first time in maybe too-long that they’ve both been in one of their homes without the kids, and that just - - that feels weird too, and is this what it’ll be like in the new place? She just doesn’t _know_ , and maybe that frightens her most of all. Shifting her weight again, Beth says the only thing she can. 

“I’ll pay you back,” she repeats, and Rio finally breaks, half-laughing, half-groaning (either way, the noise is _loud_ ), folding briefly forwards, hands clenching in visible frustration, before sitting back up. His eyes drop back to his laptop screen, his hands finding the wireless mouse. 

“Yeah? You gonna rob another grocery store? Another day spa? Me again?” he chuckles at his own joke, eyes still on the screen. “That last one kinda defeats the purpose, huh?” 

“This isn’t funny,” Beth snaps, and Rio’s gaze does flick back up to her at that. 

“Am I laughin’?”

And frankly, he just had been, but she doesn’t feel like bringing that up will do her any favours. Rocking her jaw, Beth throws her hands up in exasperation, moving away from him. He seems as relieved at the reprieve as she does, his fingers moving slowly over the keys (he’s almost as slow of a typer as she is, has to look at them to figure out where the letters are as much as she does), and Beth finds herself, not for the first time, looking over the open plan space of his apartment. It really is nice. As much as she makes fun of his abstract taste, he does know how to fit a room together to make it feel _expensive_ \- then again, everything here is probably expensive. 

_Half a million dollars for some cameras and sensors,_ she reminds herself dryly. 

For bullet-resistant doors. 

Beth sucks in a breath, rubbing at her chest a little, willing some of the heat out of it. Into it. God, she doesn’t know. She’s so tired. 

She should just go to bed, but - - 

Her eyes catch on his bookshelves and his record collections, all his canvases and frames, and then stops. Marcus went back to his mom’s today, and yet there his room is, perfectly intact. Something in her chest seizes in panic, before she tries to logic it back down to a calmer place. 

“Aren’t you going to pack?” she asks, her tone hovering between curiosity and accusation, and he shrugs, still typing something out on his laptop. 

“Movers are comin’ on Friday,” he tells her, and Beth blinks, startled. It takes her a second to realise what he means, and then when she does, she almost breaks her neck in how quickly she spins it around to look at him. 

“You booked that company that packs for you?” 

Glancing up at her briefly from his laptop, he nods, the glow from the screen illuminating the lower half of his face in the early morning darkness. 

“Told you I did,” he says, then adds: “I did offer, mami,” and Beth folds her arms across her chest. It’s not like he didn’t – she really has no right to be annoyed, but she can’t quite bite her tongue in time. God, she’d thought he’d been _joking_ when he’d said he booked it. 

“You really just throw money at all your problems, don’t you?” 

When he blinks, he keeps his eyes shut for maybe a moment longer than normal, a tell-tale sign she’s starting to really piss him off, but she can’t quite help it. It’s not just the packers, it’s the realtor he keeps on payroll, it’s the security system, it’s the country club, it’s the _by appointment only furniture shop_ , and it’s a world so alarmingly foreign to Beth that she finds herself balking at the sheer implication of it.

“I _throw money_ at shit I don’t need takin’ up my time,” he says, his tone bristly. “I don’t need to spend weeks packin’ up my apartment and stressin’ about movin’ shit when I got contacts who can do it for me.” 

Beth rolls her eyes, wandering over to his bookshelf, and before she can even help it, she pulls a few titles out, her fingers catching on the hardback spines. 

“I could pack it for you,” she says, tone almost offering, but she’s already planning boxes in her head, a system for moving, and she’s startled from her thoughts when Rio barks on a laugh, shaking his head. 

“No.” 

He keeps typing something, and so Beth ignores him, looking back at his bookshelves. It’s a start too, she thinks, to pay him back for the security system. Her stomach warms at the thought. 

“It’d be easier if I did it anyway,” she decides, and she sees Rio grab a pen, start scratching something down in his notebook. “You’re so organised anyway, it won’t take that long.” 

The sound of paper tearing suddenly fills her ears, and she looks over to see that he’s ripped out a scrap of paper from his notebook and is offering it out to her with one hand. 

“What’s that?” 

“Some drops,” he drawls. “Since you got so much free time and all.” 

Beth blinks, shoving the books back in so that she can turn to look at him properly. 

“ I don’t - - I mean. That’s not what I meant,” she says, and Rio gives her a look that says he doesn’t care. He doesn’t lower his hand, so Beth takes the slip of paper, reading the VINs and the drop points. There’s only three on there, so it’s not too much, but adding them to the list in her head nearly makes her fall sideways, particularly when she thinks about packing up his apartment too. 

She doesn’t even realise she’s nodding until Rio makes a noise in the back of his throat, pushing back in his chair and folding his arms across his bare chest. A brief look passes his face – like this hasn’t gone the way that he had intended it to – and when Beth just stares back, he exhales with a hiss. 

“You know, I really don’t get why you’re pissed at all this,” he tells her. “Like I said, I pay for shit that doesn’t matter so I can focus on what does. You want me at the school visits wit’ you on Thursday?” 

Beth blinks, straightening her back, still clutching the scrap of paper in her hands. 

“Yes.” 

“You want me lookin’ at bed’s at Ricky’s Rip Offs, or wherever shitty place you gonna take me next?” 

Beth glares at that, “Yes” 

“You want me pickin’ up the keys wit’ you on Saturday?” 

“I get it,” she says, sulking, but Rio’s not done. 

“Mami, me payin’ a packer, a realtor, a painter, I ain’t payin’ people to do shit for me, I’m buyin’ myself time to do the shit that _I_ need to do. That I _want_ to do. Just because you ain’t yet learnt you can’t do everythin’ yourself doesn’t mean that I haven’t. What _I_ need to do right now is keep our business movin’ and get your lily ass settled in that house so you can do all that mama bear nestin’ shit before we have to get the kids in too.”

“I said that I get it,” she repeats, voice louder this time, a twitch to her forehead, and she regrets even coming back here, wishes she’d stayed at Annie’s after all, and he just shakes his head at her, before giving her another look right before going back to his laptop, and Beth shuffles her weight, feeling oddly reprimanded. 

“I can do these drops tomorrow,” she says, her voice low, and he stares at her, like he’s suddenly pissed off all over again, like her agreeing to do them hadn’t been what he’d wanted at all, but he doesn’t say anything else. Just huffs out a breath, gritting his teeth as he says: 

“Good.” 

She waits for him to say something else, but he doesn’t, and so she simmers a little in anger herself, before saying, “I’m going to bed.” 

“Even better,” he says again. 

And Beth opens her mouth furiously to reply, only to see his shoulders tense, readying himself for another fight, and suddenly Beth just doesn’t have the energy. She blinks, turning away, and she doesn’t even bother getting properly undressed to go to bed, just shucks out of Annie’s too-small sweats, and Greg’s cut-up t-shirt, pulling off her bra, until she’s only in her panties, and she doesn’t wake up when Rio comes to bed, but when she does wake up in the early hours of the morning, he’s breathing soft and steady against her chest, warming her skin, and she’s still upset enough at him that she really wishes it didn’t already feel like home.

*

She’s woken up the next time by the sound of a received text message, and she almost ignores it, but then, with a slight spike of guilt – wonders if Annie perhaps missed the note she’d left out for her, if she’s worried, if something’s happened. It’s enough to make Beth exhale, exhausted, pulling herself up just enough to grab her phone off the bedside table, careful not to disrupt Rio who is still breathing steadily at her chest.

_Your order is ready to be collected! The Detroit Wallpaper Company operates from 8am-6pm, Monday to Saturday. Quote reference number: Happy Shopper 7894_

Beth blinks, eyes casting down the message, a grin spreading across her face before she can stop it, because this? This is something she can _do_. Glancing down at Rio, she gently grabs the pillow from behind her head, sliding herself out of bed and replacing the weight beneath his head with it. She half-expects him to stir, but he doesn’t, and god, what time did he even go to bed? 

At the exhausted weight to her own body, she wonders what time did _she_? 

Still, there’s no time to waste now. 

Padding into the bathroom, she washes herself as quietly as she can with a cloth at the sink, resisting the urge to shower so as not to wake Rio, touches up yesterday’s make up, ties back her hair, and tosses on one of the older, looser house dresses she’d packed for this exact purpose. She grabs the scrap of paper with the drops on it, her binder of paint-swatches for the kids’ rooms, and is still thinking about texting Lisa on the way to pick up a key for the house when she pauses. 

Yesterday, Cal had told her he’d be back to set them up with the electromagnetic lock – creating a bio-scanner that would require their fingerprints, but in the meantime, he’d had something else. A little key fob like the clicker for a car, and maybe she wouldn’t have even remembered it if it wasn’t for the fact there was one right now on Rio’s bedside table. Edging slowly closer, she racks her head for anything else it could possibly be for, and if she’d ever seen it before, and when she comes up with nothing, she grabs it, and heads out of the apartment. 

It’s barely nine when she leaves, and she catches a Lyft straight to the auto auction, doing the three drops Rio had given her, before making her way back to Annie’s place, grateful her sister is at work when she picks up her own car and heads out to pick up the wallpaper. Grabbing the biggest, triple-shot coffee she can to try and steer off her aching bones, Beth heads to the house. 

And the thing is, it’s _weird_ to get there on her own. She’s been here a few times now after all, but always with Lisa, or Rio, or the girls, or the kids, never by herself, and there’s something stranger than she can articulate about walking up that path, taking in the slatted walls and the lilac blush of fragrant lavender and the tall, farmhouse-style roof, and it’s just - - it’s different to her old house. 

But it feels like _home_. 

Shuttering in a breath, she darts up the front steps, pulling the key fob from her pocket and pressing the button, breathing a sigh of relief when she hears the door lurch open. And she’s not sure what she’s expecting – maybe ugly, visible cameras like Rio had had in his loft before he’d left it behind, but - - there really is no sign that Cal or his team had ever been here beyond the metal bars at the top of the front door, and she’s not sure if that makes her feel better or worse. The clean lines of the house are just that – clean, untouched, and it doesn’t feel empty like her old house had the other day, instead it feels almost pregnant with possibility and promise and - - and _right_.

The promise is what all this is _for_. 

To make her children a new home. 

One for them, and - - 

And for _her and Rio_. 

She _wants_ this, more than she ever thought she could want it. 

Heading back to the car, Beth grabs the rolls of wallpaper, her binder of swatches, her purse, and lugs it all back into the house, making awkward work of getting it up the stairs, dropping it in the hallway before finally settling first in Danny’s bedroom. She props the jungle wallpaper up against the wall, letting the rest of the rolls sit in the hallway. Without seeing it in person, she hadn’t quite settled on a shade of green for the rest of the room, and she fumbles through her binder of collected swatches, finding the couple that she’d circled and holding them up to compare. 

She makes a neat, easy pace throughout the day, ignoring the exhaustion that stiffens her muscles and slows her step, moving from Danny’s room to Marcus’, to Emma’s, and she’s just started comparing shades of rich cream paints when she hears a thud behind her. 

Turning quickly on the spot, Beth is met with the sight of Rio, dressed in jeans and a grey button-down, leaning heavily against the doorframe. They just stare at each other for a minute, tension ebbing in the space between them before Beth blurts out: 

“I did the drops.” 

Something in Rio’s expression twitches at the words, but Beth isn’t quite fast enough in her current state of mind to see it, and he nods at least, like maybe he gets it, his gaze fixed on her, and she suddenly feels a wave of self-consciousness nearly overwhelm her. God, she hasn’t even showered. She fiddles with the hem of her loose blue housedress, before clearing her throat, moving to turn around, re-focus on the job at hand, when suddenly Rio speaks behind her:

“Let’s play dream house.” 

He says it so casually, so flippantly, and Beth blinks back at him, eyeing him carefully where he’s leaning bodily against the doorframe, the stark, almost physical memory of that stupid game of twenty questions, all that time ago, ricocheting through her head. It takes her a few goes opening her mouth to find the words she wants to say. 

“Isn’t this it?” she says eventually, gesturing around, trying to deflect, and Rio shrugs. 

“No pool,” he tells her. “No chickens.” 

“We can still get chickens,” she replies, and Rio gives her a look that makes her swallow a grin, despite herself. She thinks he really might hate chickens. 

“You got your high ceilings and your fireplace,” she adds, and he just shrugs, looking at her again.

“Let’s play it different, yeah? Since we just got a house and all. Let’s play what we didn’t get.” 

Beth blinks at him, surprised, but he’s still there, pressed against the doorframe, looking easily back at her, like they haven’t spent the last 24-hours fighting, and she shifts her weight, biting the inside of her cheek. 

“Well then, you said it,” she answers slowly. “No pool, no chickens. I got everything else.” 

Is that what he wants to hear? She did, after all – the dishwasher, the two-car garage, the big, built-in laundry. Rio seems to be turning the thought over too, nodding, almost happy, when he says: 

“Me too. I think I mighta left some things off my list the first time though.” 

Squinting a little, Beth watches him cautiously, tuning out the sounds of the afternoon traffic, the distant tune of someone laughing, a splash, like someone has cannonballed into a suburban pool. Instead, she tries to tune into him, to the slight curve of his mouth, to his steady breaths, the tenor of his deep voice. 

“Oh, yeah?” she asks, and he nods, looking at the floor, before back up at her, his gaze dragging up her body, slow and hot, like he’s touching every inch of her as he does it. 

“See, I’d like you on your back in it. On the floor, on the counter, in bed. Don’t care,” he finally pushes off the door frame, wetting his lips as he looks at her. “Just horizontal, yeah?” 

And Beth? Beth just rolls her eyes, ignoring the heat pooling in her, and she makes a production out of looking back at the paint swatches for Jane’s room, comparing the shades of cream as she tosses out with a put-upon carelessness: 

“That’s not how the game works.” 

He furrows his brow in faux confusion, taking a step closer to her. 

“No? What if I said I wanted you so fucked out you couldn’t think or walk straight?” 

“That’s _really_ not how the game works,” she says, her breath hitching, and Rio takes another step closer to her, to be in arms reach of her, and Beth focuses harder on the paint swatches in her hands. 

“I thought the game was about what I wanted in my dream house,” he purrs above her, and god, has he moved even closer? Beth blinks up at him, her eyes half-lidded, and he’s almost swaying, gently, softer above her, and when she opens her mouth to refute, he cuts her off. “Let me take care of you, mami.” 

And has he always looked this good? She figures he has - - has known that since she first saw him on her kitchen counter, as loathe as she is to admit it, but right now he just looks _too_ good, too handsome, in the dark pools of his eyes and the sharpness of his features. The softness of his lips, as he speaks to her in her daughter’s bedroom, in the house that they own together, and she doesn’t even realise she’s nodding until Rio’s yanking the swatches from her hands and pulling off her dress in one seamless, fluid motion, scattering both to the floor around them. 

He grabs her ass, pulling her against him, and Beth keens, frantically working the buttons of his shirt until it’s too hard, until she’s just _pulling it_ , ruining it like he’s ruined too many of her blouses, and she figures that he can just add it to her tab, because getting her hands on his bare chest feels like the best sort of trade, and then his mouth is on hers and he’s yanking her up against him as he’s dropping them both heavily to the floor. 

“ _Rio_ ,” she pants, a little winded, and despite his effort to brace her fall, she’s sure there’ll be bruises on her back tomorrow. But it’s hard to think about it because he’s not even pulling off her panties, he’s _tearing_ them off her, and his hand is finding her clit and god, she’s so _wet_ for him, scrambling at his back, desperate for this, _needing_ this, and it takes her a moment to realise that he’s talking, takes his free hand hooking under her chin, forcing her to look at him, his other set of fingers working slow at her clit. 

“You drivin’ me fuckin’ crazy with all this shit, you know that?” he says, and Beth keens, attuning to the sharp tone of his dulcet voice, her hips jerking up, trying to get more friction, but Rio doesn’t give it to her. “You take on too much.” 

Beth glowers at him, but it probably loses its impact with how breathless she is, with how hard the floorboards are beneath her naked ass. 

“Have I let anything slip? Have I messed anything up?” she says back to him, breathless but self-righteous, and he laughs, and for the first time, he sounds as exhausted as she feels. 

“Yeah, mami, _you_. You ain’t takin’ care of yourself, and you barely lettin’ me take care of you, and this shit is fuckin’ tirin’.”

He swipes a thumb across her clit then, and Beth gasps, hands cupping the back of his neck, and she looks up at him, and she sees it – all the ways he wants to kiss her, but when she leans up for it, he pulls back, away from her. 

Falling back until the back of her head bumps gracelessly against the floor, Beth glances up at him in disbelief, suddenly annoyed, even as he’s coaxing her closer and closer to an orgasm. She drops a hand to the wrist between her legs, pushing it away. 

“You’re the one who gave me more drops to do,” she says, finding the will in her to scramble out from underneath him, and he lets her, resting back on his haunches. She reaches for her panties, to put them back on, but when she realises he’s actually ripped them, she tosses them aside, grabbing her dress instead and tugging it on over herself. 

“Yeah, to try and make you delegate this shit out,” he tells her. “I’d booked someone to pack up my place, and you were actin’ like you were three minutes away from callin’ ‘em to cancel, and doin’ it yourself.”

“So what if I was?” she hisses, looking over at him. “I’m allowed to have my own way of doing things. I’m allowed to want to pay you back when you spend _half a million dol_ \- -”

She doesn’t even get to finish it before he’s throwing his hands up, falling back onto his ass on the floor and shaking his head at her. 

“We ain’t talkin’ about that again. What we talkin’ about is how you got a boss bitch in you, but bein’ a boss means knowin’ what it is _you_ need to do, and knowin’ what other people can do for you. At least half this shit the last few weeks, someone coulda done for you. And I really fuckin’ tried, mami.” 

Beth stares at him across the floor, her eyes wide, and Rio sighs, suddenly dropping his back to the floor too, his gaze staring up at the ceiling, and he looks - - he really does look tired all of a sudden, and Beth just - - 

She knows that. 

She knows that he tried. Knows that Annie and Ruby have too, and it just all is too much, these last few weeks – and god, has it really only been a month? Since he asked her, since she sold her home, since she packed up and told Ruby and Annie, and the kids, and Dean, and can’t they see that she’s trying too? Can’t they see that she’s had nothing for so long, that all she has to give to make them know how much she loves them is what she can do for them, and the ways that she can support them, and the ways that she can be strong for them and – and - - 

Oh. 

Beth stutters in a breath, looking away from him, desperately trying to slow her rapidly beating heart, and she glances at him, at where his gaze is still fixed on the ceiling, where her own is on the long, elegant line of him, and she turns away from it, has to, because he has done so much, and she thinks maybe she - - 

“I’m not used to having people help me,” Beth says finally, her toes curling, her fingers twitching nervously against the cool, hardwood floors at the admission. “And you keep - - you keep wanting to do things for me, and I just - - I’m not good at that. And like, the last time I let somebody try, he spent twenty years cheating on me, lost all our money and almost made me and my children homeless, so…” 

She swipes at her face, only to stop when his hand comes over instead, and god, she hadn’t even seen him get up, hadn’t seen him draw so close. He chases a few tears away with a calloused thumb, and Beth leans into his touch, the soothing caress of him almost lulling her to sleep, the hard lines of his face softened by the look in his eye as he watches her. 

“I ain’t him, Elizabeth,” he tells her, and she nods. 

“I know,” she whispers. “But I’m still me.” 

And she exhales at that, her chest heavy with history and the weight of these few weeks, on the boundless, unrelenting pressure of _moving_ , and it shouldn’t be true, but she somehow lightens when Rio pushes her gently back until she’s lying down on the floor, kissing her, biting her lip until it swells, and Beth’s back arches to better meet him. 

But he just pushes her down again, pulling off her dress for the second time that day as he kisses his way down her body, finally finding his way between her legs and wasting no time mouthing his way to her clit. Beth gasps, arching off the floor again, her thighs trying to clench around his head, but he holds her open with one hand, pushing a finger in with the other and fucking her roughly with it, working in time with the flat, wet width of his tongue on her clit. And he’s barely started with the second finger when she’s pushing at his head, still gasping breathlessly, grabbing his arm, trying to pull him up, and he looks confused up at her when she just strokes his face, her fingers going to his lips, dragging through where they’re wet with his own saliva, with her - - just _her_ , and she can barely breathe. 

“I want you,” she tells him, and he blinks at her, but doesn’t need any further direction before he’s kicking off his jeans and crawling up her body, pushing into her in one, deep thrust. 

Beth gasps, scrambling back against the floor before finding purchase on his back, scratching at his shoulder blades, frantically moving against his deep and steady thrusts, and she just - - she feels too hot, all of this feels too much, too urgent, too _something_ , and his thumb’s at her clit again and she’s clenching around him and she’s coming too quickly, shaking against him, and she thinks maybe she’s crying, maybe knows she is, and then her hands are around his shoulders and she’s holding him close through his orgasm, and she just - - she can’t quite let him go. And he must be tired, she thinks, because he doesn’t last so long anyway, yanking her legs up so they’re almost at his arm pits, thrusting so deep into her that Beth thinks she can just about feel him at her teeth before he cums inside her, and collapses heavily against her. 

It takes him a minute to move, but Beth can barely think herself, so doesn’t exactly worry about it, even though she’s sure his weight is vaguely crushing her. When he finally pulls out and rolls off her, heaving himself onto the floor beside her, she finds herself oddly missing him anyway. The thought stirs strangely in her gut – sitting funny in it’s unfamiliarity (she could never get Dean away from her fast enough after sex), Beth finds herself glancing sideways, groaning when she sees the roll of woodland creature wallpaper propped against the wall. 

“I can’t believe the first time we had sex in this house was on the floor in my daughter’s bedroom,” Beth groans, rubbing briefly at her face, and Rio just snorts beside her. 

“Ain’t her room yet, don’t worry about it,” and then, laughing a little to himself. “Good story for her 21st.” 

Beth tries to shove him, but she’s too tired, so she mostly just kind of slaps him awkwardly across the chest, tilting her head sideways to press her still-flushed cheek into the floorboards as she looks at him. 

“How’d you even get in here?” she asks. “I took your key.” 

It’s enough to make him laugh, shrug, a smug expression crossing his face as he looks right back at her.

“Nah, you took your key, ma,” he tells her. “Figured the easiest way to give it to you was to leave it somewhere for you to steal.” 

Beth gasps, and if she had even a single shred of energy, she’d be up and out of here and - - and maybe not. Maybe she’d be doing exactly what she’s doing now, which is half-playfully, half-genuinely glaring at him, sprawled out, fucked out, on the floor. 

“The house isn’t even ours until Saturday.” 

And he looks at her then, shrugging, his face a little too lax.

“Been ours since yesterday. Gretchen closed the deal early.” 

Beth startles, intending to jerk her head away, but finding herself too exhausted even for that. She still manages to level him with a considered, judgemental stare though. 

“And you didn’t tell me because…” 

Rio just shrugs, lifting his hand to stroke her face, his other coming up to gently draw a line with one finger from below her breast to her nipple through the lace cup of her bra.

“Was hopin’ you might relax if you had no extra-curriculars for a few days. Might do the nine to five then get off the clock.” 

“A little rich coming from you,” she says, and god, she’s almost slurring with how tired she is, and Rio shrugs, not disagreeing. 

“You gonna close your eyes?” he asks her, and Beth blinks at him. 

“I’m not even that tired,” she whispers, but then Rio’s hand finds the back of her neck, gently massaging out the knots there, and between that, and her blissed out, fucked out state, Beth falls asleep.

*

She wakes up in a bed.

More specifically, she wakes up, belly-down, in the most comfortable bed she thinks she’s ever slept on in her life. It’s like a cloud, she thinks dreamily, like - - 

Like the bed they (well, _she_ ) definitely couldn’t afford. 

Beth sits up, blinking wildly, and it takes a moment to orient herself, to figure out exactly where she is, and if it wasn’t for the slow click of the keyboard beside her, she’d slide out of this traitorous bed entirely. 

She doesn’t know how long she’s been asleep, but if the low-hanging sun outside their bedroom window is anything to go by, she thinks it must be late-afternoon, and just - - she reels back a little, looking around at their empty room. 

Or rather, empty with the exception of the ridiculously large, ridiculously soft bed that she’s currently lying in. And she knows, of course she knows, even before she looks, that the second she does she’s going to be met with the art deco frame she’d fallen in love with last week, the one she’d talked Rio out of buying because they had a _budget_ , dammit. 

“When did you do it?” she asks, her voice thick with sleep, her tone slightly accusatory, but mostly just still exhausted as she glances up at Rio beside her. He’s stripped down to his underwear for likely no other reason than he seems to prefer to be that way (not that Beth’s complaining), and looks long and languid beside her, laptop propped over a pillow in his lap as he works through what looks like a spreadsheeted timeline on the screen. 

“This mornin’,” he tells her, typing something into his laptop. “When I woke up and you weren’t in my bed. Figured if you were just gonna do what you wanted, so was I.” 

“Do not blame this ridiculously expensive bed on me,” she tells him, only half-outraged as she scoots further back down in it. He’d been kind enough to put her ugly day dress back on, and she’s sure he would’ve done it anyway, him knowing her tendency towards privacy, but she’s sure it was at least partially expediated because of whoever delivered this bed, and then - - god, she almost snorts. Had it really only been four days since Annie had asked if Rio carried Beth to bed? 

Instead of interrogating those thoughts any further, Beth just wriggles further down in it, her dress scrunching up her bare ass at the motion, and she doesn’t even have to look to know that Rio’s eyes are on it. Has it more or less confirmed when she hears him close his laptop and drop it gently to the floor. 

“I live here now,” Beth says with an almost pornographic moan, and Rio snorts on a laugh beside her. 

“Yeah, ma, remember how we bought the place?”

“No, I mean here, in this bed.” 

It’s enough to make him scoot down the bed beside her, pushing her hair gently off her face before sliding his hand down her back, sliding to her ass. 

“Works for me,” he purrs, and Beth’s too tired to even bat him off. Besides, his hand is warm, and even though it’s calloused, it feels soft to her. 

“You shouldn’t have bought it without talking to me about it,” she tells him, cracking an eye open, and he nods. 

“Sure. We gonna talk about all that fuckin’ wallpaper and those unicorn lamps you bought without talkin’ to me?” 

“I did talk to you,” Beth says, turning her face enough in the pillow that she can look haughtily up at him about it. “You gave your opinion, it was noted, discussed, filed, and then overruled.” 

“Oh, is that right?” he replies, amused. “Wish I’d known that was the system we were goin’ with. Woulda saved me a lot of time.” 

“Same rules don’t apply to you,” Beth tells him, and he slides a little closer, so close she can feel the heat radiating off his body, and she just - - she swallows thickly. 

“No? Why not?” 

“Because.” 

“Because why?” 

“Just because,” she says, wrinkling her nose, and he laughs at her, stretching out the stiffness in his shoulders, his neck, and she can’t help but look at him, feels an overwhelming amount of attraction to the hard, lean lines of his body that still makes her blush, and he clocks it, of course he does, his lips pulling into a lazy smirk, and when she sees him flex a little, she rolls her eyes, pushing her face back into the pillow, arms coming up underneath it. He moves his hands from the back of her ass over to her hip, scratching softly at the skin there, before pushing her onto her side to face him. 

Forced to look at him again (not that she’s complaining exactly, although also - - sleep sounds so good), Beth raises an eyebrow, watching as his hand tracks up her body, pushing her dress up to her armpits, cupping her breast gently. 

“I will fall asleep on you again,” she says, and she hates the way her breath hitches, hates the way he clocks it, sliding closer to her side.

“What’d I say before? You ain’t gotta do nothin’ but let me take care of you,” he purrs, kissing down her neck, mouthing at where her bra stops and her breasts push over the top. He hums appreciatively, his other hand sliding beneath her back to undo the clasp on her bra while he sucks a hickey into the curve of her breast. 

“You gonna say it?” he asks her then, his tone almost too casual, and Beth looks over at him, her gaze a little too hot, even in her confusion. 

“Say what?” 

“That I was right.” 

Beth scoffs, but she doesn’t move away when he pulls her bra off her, nor when he sucks a nipple into his mouth. 

“About what?” she asks a little breathlessly, and Rio grins, propping himself up off her enough he can tug her underneath him, his body crawling over hers, until he’s on all fours above her, just like yesterday morning before Marcus interrupted. 

“Was there somethin’ I wasn’t right about?” 

And she opens her mouth to reply, and she’s not sure if it’s the exhaustion, or the relief of having a new home, of being _in it_ – even if there is still so much to be done – or if it’s the way he looks at her, eyes dark and his lips already wet, but something in the twist of him that goes so much further than lust, and just - - he’s her _boyfriend_ , Beth thinks, with a near hysterical laugh, the thought of her making her feel so - - too - - just making her _feel_. 

So instead she tilts her chin up, arching an eyebrow at him as she says: 

“You’re doing a lot of talking for someone who keeps saying they’re going to take care of me,” and it’s enough to make Rio laugh, something loud and honest and just - - _good_ , and then - - 

Well.

Then he takes care of her.

**Author's Note:**

> Hahahaha, this somehow endeed up SO. LONG. Anyway, I hope you like it. <3 There's lot of fighting and making up in the next chapter as they actually, y'know, move.
> 
> [PS This is loosely what the house they move on is based on!](https://www.landisconstruction.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/4015-DresdencroppedforWebsite.jpg)
> 
> Title come from the She & Him song, 'Home'.
> 
> Series title comes from a Charlotte Perkins Gilman quote "The home is the center and circumference, the start and the finish, of most of our lives."


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